cell migration

In honor of the great Scienceblogs migration, and inspired by Ethan's wonderful post about the migration of the universe, I thought I would talk about something on a smaller scale: cell migration. The scale is small, but the problem is huge. Most of your organs are locked in place - your heart never needs to be in your thigh - but the immune system has to be everywhere. When you cut your toe, breathe a virus into your lungs or eat a piece of contaminated spinach, the immune system needs to be johnny-on-the-spot with the inflammatory response. Thankfully, there's already an organ system that…

The journey undertaken by newly generated neurons in the adult brain is like the cellular equivalent of the arduous upstream migration of salmon returning to the rivers in which they were hatched. Soon after they are born in the subventricular zone near the back of the brain, these cells migrate to the front-most tip of of the olfactory bulb. This is the furthest point from their birth place, and they traverse two-thirds of the length of the brain to get there. The first leg of this epic journey - the departure of the newborn cells from the subventricular zone - involves some of the…