Event
Bioengineering Seminar Series: Avis Cohen
Friday, March 4, 2011
11:00 a.m.
Room 1110, Glenn L. Martin Hall
Professor Helim Aranda-Espinoza
helim@umd.edu
Regulation of Sprouting After Spinal Cord Injury
Avis Cohen
Professor
Department of Biology
University of Maryland, College Park
The lamprey has long been used as a model system for spinal cord lesions and especially for behavioral recovery from such lesions. Although we were first to demonstrate that lampreys can recover from spinal lesions, we also showed that temperature can impact the outcome with the native cold temperature producing a lower likelihood of full behavioral recovery. However, with the data presented in this seminar we show a new and possibly more important wrinkle to the story: at the animals native temperature there appears to be evidence that there is evidence that the first lesion can behave like a conditioning lesion and produce rapid sprouting when a second lesion is made at the original lesion site. This was not found at other temperatures or at other lesion sites.
