MCB Joint Seminar Series: Megan Corty "How and why do glia wrap axons?"

All peripheral axons in your nerves are ensheathed by specialized glia cells. Though the most widely studied form of axon ensheathment is myelination, the majority of axons (70%) in human peripheral nerves are not myelinated. Instead, they are ensheathed by non-myelinating Remak Schwann cells, which are positioned to play important roles in sensory function, axon health, and nerve injury/regeneration, but have been virtually ignored in most studies. As a result, we know astonishingly little about how non-myelinating ensheathment develops nor precisely how it supports axons and circuit function. Our lab studies an analogous form of ensheathment in the genetically tractable organism Drosophila melanogaster to probe glia-axon interactions and peripheral nerve biology in vivo, with a focus on discovering new molecular players and cellular mechanisms that control the development and function of this important but critically understudied type of axonal ensheathment.