ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2012
Wnt7A identifies embryonic γ-motor neurons and reveals early postnatal dependence of γ-motor neurons on a muscle spindle-derived signal.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Prospective Regulatory Functions of lncRNAs and Their ceRNA Networks in the Development of Motor Neurons and Associated Diseases.Biomolecules · 2026Review
- Little Known Facts, Controversies and Misconceptions About Cranial Motor Nuclei (and a New Classification for All Motoneurons, Cranial, and Spinal).The Journal of comparative neurology · 2026Review
- Defining spinal motor neuron subtypes across development: from embryonic specification to postnatal maturation.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2026Review
- Morphological segmentation with tiling light sheet microscopy to quantitatively analyze the three-dimensional structures of spinal motoneurons.Cell regeneration (London, England) · 2025Article
- Molecular, Morphological and Electrophysiological Differences between Alpha and Gamma Motoneurons with Special Reference to the Trigeminal Motor Nucleus of Rat.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- The making of a proprioceptor: a tale of two identities.Trends in neurosciences · 2023Review
- Single-cell transcriptomic landscape of the developing human spinal cord.Nature neuroscience · 2023Article
- Intrafusal-fiber LRP4 for muscle spindle formation and maintenance in adult and aged animals.Nature communications · 2023Article
- ERR2 and ERR3 promote the development of gamma motor neuron functional properties required for proprioceptive movement control.PLoS biology · 2022Article
- A model for self-organization of sensorimotor function: the spinal monosynaptic loop.Journal of neurophysiology · 2022Article
- Establishing the Molecular and Functional Diversity of Spinal Motoneurons.Advances in neurobiology · 2022Article
- Single nucleus RNA-sequencing defines unexpected diversity of cholinergic neuron types in the adult mouse spinal cord.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Methodological advances for studying gamma motor neurons.Current opinion in physiology · 2021Article
- Motor Neuron Diseases and Neuroprotective Peptides: A Closer Look to Neurons.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2021Review
- A Role for Sensory end Organ-Derived Signals in Regulating Muscle Spindle Proprioceptor Phenotype.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2019Article
- Motor Neuron Susceptibility in ALS/FTD.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2019Review
- Electrophysiological and Morphological Properties of α and γ Motoneurons in the Rat Trigeminal Motor Nucleus.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2018Article
- Opposite Roles of Wnt7a and Sfrp1 in Modulating Proper Development of Neural Progenitors in the Mouse Cerebral Cortex.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2018Article
- Functional analysis of human intrafusal fiber innervation by human γ-motoneurons.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Defined Culture Conditions Accelerate Small-molecule-assisted Neural Induction for the Production of Neural Progenitors from Human-induced Pluripotent Stem Cells.Cell transplantation · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Motor pools comprise a heterogeneous population of motor neurons that innervate distinct intramuscular targets. While the organization of motor neurons into motor pools has been well described, the time course and mechanism of motor pool diversification into functionally distinct classes remains unclear. γ-Motor neurons (γ-MNs) and α-motor neurons (α-MNs) differ in size, molecular identity, synaptic input and peripheral target. While α-MNs innervate extrafusal skeletal muscle fibers to mediate muscle contraction, γ-MNs innervate intrafusal fibers of the muscle spindle, and regulate sensitivity of the muscle spindle in response to stretch. In this study, we find that the secreted signaling molecule Wnt7a is selectively expressed in γ-MNs in the mouse spinal cord by embryonic day 17.5 and continues to molecularly distinguish γ-from α-MNs into the third postnatal week. Our data demonstrate that Wnt7a is the earliest known γ-MN marker, supporting a model of developmental divergence between α- and γ-MNs at embryonic stages. Furthermore, using Wnt7a expression as an early marker of γ-MN identity, we demonstrate a previously unknown dependence of γ-MNs on a muscle spindle-derived, GDNF-independent signal during the first postnatal week.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.