>> So, can I also say that even if one finds the molecule or the, sort of the principal in worms that are different from [INAUDIBLE] but one can still appreciate how nature design the differences to solve the same problem. And in some times because of the complexity of the mammalian or vertebrate systems, maybe it's simply because we haven't find out the corresponding paths or the the homologue or analog of those designs in in the mammalian systems. >> Yeah, I absolutely agree. I, myself, I would be perfectly happy to understand how worms solve these problems, solved these developmental problems. As I said, my drive is curiosity. And I think if you look back in the last century of life science in the United states, many of the studies are original discoveries that ultimately led to medical advances that really changed everyone's life came out of academic researches that are not aimed at curing particular diseases, right? Penicillin was discovered by pure interest in yeast, or in how fungus secretes molecules that can kill bacteria. So, I think a lot of the science is really carried out by scientists, is driven by curiosity. And I'm sure we're all interested if to convert that, translate that, into ways that we can help human and improve human health. But a lot of us, myself included, will be very happy to make, just to make some sense >> And your lab recently sort of switching from directly understand the axon guidance from a certain set of neurons in worms to a different compartment of neuron, the dendrite, or dendritical morphogenesis. And there, you identify through genetic screening new sets of molecules that controls the dendrite growth. So, what triggers your switching from the sort of establish and the field in which you are very familiar to sort of a different perspective? >> Yeah, we're not actually limiting ourselves to particular questions. I, the goal of my research program is to systematically understand the cell biology, basic cell biology of neurons. And so, we're working on questions like you mention. How dendrite acquires shape. We originally started with the work on synapses. How do you choose particular synaptic partners? Stream of that signalling event, how the intracellular mechanisms work together to transport the materials and make synapses to the right location. And what is the molecular pathways that regulates the aggregation of those material to form a presynaptic specializations with a certain size and density? Okay. So, we are studying many aspects of neuronal cell biology in order for a neuron to establish its shape, and also in order for the neurons to make their correct connections. And the cell biology spans several different areas. For example, the neuromorphogenesis is an area that that you talked about. The reason that we really now want to focus on the dendrites is because there's a lot that has been known for the axon. And I think the dendrite is a field that significantly lagged behind the axonal, or understanding of axonal morphogenesis. So, I think that's a very, that's a key reason that we're going to the dendrite. Secondly, we're interested in understanding how the microtube inside a skeleton in a neuronal cell the skeleton is patterned. And because I think that is, again, a very important upstream event that lays down the road, provides some key information to the polarity, intercellular polarity, of these cells, rather large cells. And we're also working on how molecular motors, how do they interact with particular microtubules, and that decides how the cargo proteins will interact with some simple motor proteins and be transported into a different compartment, several distinct compartments. We're also interested in upstream sorting mechanisms, how you distinguish axonal proteins with dendritic proteins. And how do you separate them into different transport cargos, and to enables this diverging transport, or sorting of the proteins? And, ultimately, these are, in my view, these are the fundamental cell biological questions that probably every neuron will encounter, whether it's worm neuron, a fly neuron or mammalian neuron. So, we want to stay at these fundamental questions so that I hope that the answers we're gaining from looking at worm systems can be applied to higher organism in a rather direct way.
