Synthetic ablations in the nervous system.

Netw Neurosci

Network Science Institute and Department of Physics, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.

Published: March 2020

AI Article Synopsis

  • Synthetic lethality involves knocking out multiple nonessential genes to cause cell death, providing insights into cellular function and therapeutic uses.
  • The concept is underexplored in neuroscience, particularly in understanding how the simultaneous removal of neuron pairs or triplets affects neural systems.
  • Research revealed that specific sets of neuron pairs (58) and triplets (46) can significantly impact muscle control during gentle touch, leading to targeted predictions about the mechanisms behind this loss and the affected muscle cells.

Article Abstract

Synthetic lethality, the finding that the simultaneous knockout of two or more individually nonessential genes leads to cell or organism death, has offered a systematic framework to explore cellular function, and also offered therapeutic applications. Yet the concept lacks its parallel in neuroscience-a systematic knowledge base on the role of double or higher order ablations in the functioning of a neural system. Here, we use the framework of network control to systematically predict the effects of ablating neuron pairs and triplets on the gentle touch response. We find that surprisingly small sets of 58 pairs and 46 triplets can reduce muscle controllability in this context, and that these sets are localized in the nervous system in distinct groups. Further, they lead to highly specific experimentally testable predictions about mechanisms of loss of control, and which muscle cells are expected to experience this loss.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7055645PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/netn_a_00115DOI Listing

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