Timothy M Gomez
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Neuroscience
To wire up the nervous system, growing nerve fibers called axons must travel long distances and find the right targets. Many axons must also push through basement membranes, thin sheets of extracellular matrix (ECM), the protein scaffold between cells, to leave the spinal cord or enter other tissues.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Biology
- Topics
axon guidance
growth cone
invadosomes
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2030
What they work on
- Identify which EGF-family ligands (EGF and Neuregulins) and ErbB receptors trigger growth cones to form and mature invadosomes, actin-based protrusions that degrade matrix, using gain- and loss-of-function manipulations and fluorescence imaging of cultured neurons.
- Define the signals downstream of ErbB receptors that control invadosome formation in motor and Rohon-Beard neuron growth cones, using molecular manipulations with live and fixed cell imaging.
- Test whether mature invadosomes use microtubules to deliver matrix metalloproteases (MMPs), enzymes that cut extracellular matrix, to the growth cone surface for local secretion.
- Test whether invadosomes and MMP targeting are required for peripheral axons to exit the spinal cord through basement membranes, using live imaging in vivo.
More about the research
Most studies of axon guidance have looked at axons crawling on flat surfaces or along existing nerve tracts. Much less is known about how axons move through three-dimensional tissue. Mis-guided axons may underlie many neurodevelopmental disorders, and axons often fail to regrow after injury or disease.
Why it matters
Learning how axons cut their way through tissue barriers could help explain how wiring errors arise in neurodevelopmental disorders. It could also inform efforts to help axons regrow after nerve injury or disease, where regeneration often fails. The work identifies specific molecules, ErbB signaling and MMPs, that may control this process.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Greg J. Bashaw
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Neuroscience
Define how the fly receptor Frazzled/DCC recruits and regulates the Wave Regulatory Complex, a set of proteins that builds actin filaments, during Netrin-driven axon attraction, building on studies of disease-causing human DCC variants.
Sergiu Pasca
Stanford University, CA·Neuroscience
Generate and functionally characterize human stem cell-derived organoids that resemble the spinal cord floor plate, the midline structure that guides crossing axons.
Michael Granato
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Neuroscience
Identify the neuronal populations where three habituation genes act, using transgenic behavioral rescue in zebrafish mutants defective in acoustic startle habituation.
The school
University of Wisconsin-Madison: 91 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 854 research doctorates a year.
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