On May 26, 2010, a research paper from the Laboratory of Dendrite Development and Neural Circuit Formation entitled "N-cadherin-dependent neuron - neuron interaction is required for the maintenance of activity-induced dendrite growth" was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. This work was carried out by graduate students Zhu-Jun Tan and Yun Peng under the supervision of Dr. Xiang Yu.

Neural activity promotes the elaboration of dendrite arbors, an important aspect of neural circuit formation. Cell adhesion molecules have been proposed to play important roles during activity-dependent dendrite growth, although the precise molecular mechanism remains unclear. Zhu-Jun Tan and Yun Peng found that activity-dependent dendrite development specifically requires N-cadherin-mediated extracellular neuron-neuron interaction, as the enhancement did not occur in neurons cultured in isolation and was abolished by a soluble recombinant N-cadherin ectodomain. Importantly, neural activity elevated the surface expression of N-cadherin, an effect specifically required for the maintenance, and not initiation, of nascent dendrite branches. In summary, these results identify a specific function for activity-induced, N-cadherin mediated neuron-neuron interaction in the maintenance of newly formed dendrite arbors.

This work was supported by the grants from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.