Up the Junction

Every time you move, electrical signals crackle down nerves from your brain, connecting with the appropriate muscles and causing them to contract. These nerve impulses are as vital to muscle cells as oxygen and nutrients, and without them they die. The ghostly white traces in this microscope image are the nerve cells (motor neurons) responsible for controlling the abdominal muscles of a baby mouse, while the red glowing spots are the junctions where the nerves meet the muscle. But there's more to this story than a pretty picture: around one in every 10,000 babies is born with the genetic condition spinal muscular atrophy – the most common inherited cause of infant death – where a fault in a gene called survival motor neuron 1 (SMN1) leads to motor neurons dying. Scientists are working on ways to make a similar gene, SMN2, take over from the missing molecule, potentially leading to a cure.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

Writer

Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image by Suzan Hammond
• Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, UK
• Copyright held by the photographer
• Image first published in Issue 20 of Phenotype, the science journal of the Oxford University Biochemical Society