{"id":109423,"date":"2020-07-02T13:04:36","date_gmt":"2020-07-02T20:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/there-was-a-crooked-man-scoliosis-and-the-deep-history-of-the-brains-inner-sanctum"},"modified":"2020-07-02T13:04:36","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T20:04:36","slug":"there-was-a-crooked-man-scoliosis-and-the-deep-history-of-the-brains-inner-sanctum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/there-was-a-crooked-man-scoliosis-and-the-deep-history-of-the-brains-inner-sanctum","title":{"rendered":"There was a crooked man: Scoliosis and the deep history of the brain\u2019s inner sanctum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/there-was-a-crooked-man-scoliosis-and-the-deep-history-of-the-brains-inner-sanctum2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Lurking just beneath the surface of just about every common nursery rhyme is a complex record of times long gone. For example, the \u201ccrooked man\u201d who \u201claid a crooked sixpence upon a crooked style\u201d was none other than the great 17th-century Scot General Sir Alexander Leslie. The crooked stile was the uneasy border between Scotland and England established by the controversial covenant he signed. Quite similarly, many enigmatic structures that permanently persist or otherwise transiently appear and resorb in the development of the nervous systems of many creatures also encode a rich evolutionary past.<\/p>\n<p>One such functioning relic is Reissner\u2019s fiber, a glycoprotein sheet secreted by the subcommissural organ (SCO) that inexorably treadmills down the central canal of the spinal cord. Although the SCO was one of the first structures of the mammalian brain to differentiate, in humans, it begins regressing around age three or four and typically becomes vestigial by adulthood. The main component of Reissner\u2019s fiber is a giant 5000-amino-acid vertebrate molecule called SCO-spondin. This protein contains axonal pathfinding domains critical to development of the posterior commissure, a transhemispheric highway that bears axons controlling the pupillary light reflex.<\/p>\n<p>The other product of the SCO is a thyroid-hormone-transporting protein called transthyretin. Much like all the organified metals fixed by life, iodine has a unique story to tell in the evolution of the body plan. Recently, an intriguing connection between Reissner\u2019s fiber and development of the spine that houses it has been discovered in the model organism, zebrafish. These fish, as recently observed for the <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2020-01-serotonin-master-neuroregeneration.html\">serotonergic control<\/a> of neurogenesis, have proven to be an exemplary model for studying all things neural. In the latest issue of <i>Current Biology<\/i>, author Nathalie Jurisch-Yaksi reviews a remarkable confluence of ideas that establish an indisputable role for Reissner\u2019s membrane building a straight and strong spine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lurking just beneath the surface of just about every common nursery rhyme is a complex record of times long gone. For example, the \u201ccrooked man\u201d who \u201claid a crooked sixpence upon a crooked style\u201d was none other than the great 17th-century Scot General Sir Alexander Leslie. The crooked stile was the uneasy border between Scotland [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,385,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-evolution","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}