Pruning Brain Vasculature for Efficiency 英文参考文献.docVIP

Synopsis PruningBrainVasculatureforEfficiency CaitlinSedwick* FreelanceScienceWriter,SanDiego,California,UnitedStatesofAmerica Thebrainisconstantlyintegratingand analyzinginformationfrommyriadsourc- es. All this activity requires a continuous flow of nutrients that, in higher verte- brates,issuppliedtothebrainthroughan elaborate network of blood vessels—the brainvasculature.Butit’safragilesystem; disruption or malformation of the brain vasculaturecancauseseriousneurological problems. For that reason, it’s important tounderstandhowthebrainvasculatureis formedandmaintained. rangements, where a short blood vessel bridges two parallel ones. Over the next few days, the lengths of individual vessel segments within that network increased. Nonetheless,thedegreeofcomplexityand interconnectedness within the network significantlydecreasedatthesametime. This decrease in network complexity was achieved through conversion of O- shapedandH-shapedstructurestosimpler topologies.Forexample,thebridgemight disappear from an H-shaped structure (leaving two parallel vessels), while O- shaped structures could change into a simple straight pipe. These alterations occurred over the course of 1–2 days, with certain vessel segments becoming thinner and then collapsing around their hollowlumensastheywereprunedaway. Whyandhowdoessuchpruningoccur? Theauthorshypothesizedthattheaffected blood vessels may be redundant and that pruning them increases the efficiency of bloodflowwithinthebrain.Toinvestigate this possibility, Chen et al. employed a different line of transgenic zebrafish that expresses fluorescent labels on both vas- cular endothelial cells and on blood cells. Usingtheseanimals,theresearcherswere abletomonitorthevelocityanddirection ofbloodflowthroughoutthemidbrain. As expected, pruning increased mean blood flow velocity and decreased the numberofvessels exhibiting bidirectional blood flow. It also turned out that vessel segmentsthatwereprunedlatergenerally The earliest steps of