Grigori Enikolopov, Ph.D., Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Neurons stained for nitric oxide synthase activity.
Nitric oxide initiates a switch to cell cycle arrest during neuronal differentiation.
Our laboratory is interested in how cells progress along these differentiation pathways and how this is linked to their activity. NO has a wide range of effects in humans from regulating blood pressure to modulating brain activity. We have found that changing the levels of NO in developing Drosophila can dramatically increase or decrease the size of the fly's organs. We have also shown that NO performs similar functions during brain development in vertebrates such that by changing the levels of NO we can increase the size of the brains of Xenopus tadpoles. These findings suggest that NO acts as an essential negative regulator of cell number during development by controlling the balance between cell proliferation and cell differentiation.