On Jan 16 2015, Scientific Reports(Nature Publishing Group) published an original research article from Ying Shen’s group. The title is “Essential roles of leucine-rich glioma inactivated 1 in the development of embryonic and postnatal cerebellum”.

In the textbook, LGI1 is a classical gene that is tightly linked to human autosomal dominant lateral temporal lobe epilepsy (ADLTE). In fact, the importance of LGI1 becomes more prominent because recent work shows that LGI family members highly interact with ADAM proteins as their ligands. The functions of LGI1 in CNS development have never been studied. Unexpectedly, Ying Shen group found novel roles of LGI1 in the early development of mouse cerebellum, taking advantage of the LGI1^-/- mice. Their results show the developmental defects in the external granule layer thickness, the folia formation, and the differentiation radial glial cells into Bergmann glias. These altered phenotypes may be ascribed to abnormal Shh and Notch1 signaling. This work provides a new insight into the functions of LGI, a epilepsy gene, in the development of central nervous system.  

Co-first authors of this article are Ya-Jun Xie and Liang Zhou. Xie is a fourth-year Ph.D. student and she has published her first SCI paper in Glia as a co-first author (2013). Dr. John Cowell of Regents University provided LGI1 knockout mice. Their work was supported by NSFC and 973 project from MOST, and also technically assisted by the Core Facilities of Zhejiang University Institute of Neuroscience.