Doing the Locomotion: developmental neurobiology of animal movement

A company director planning expansion, a student fretting over an essay, in fact anyone creating something complex should consider the principles that guide animal development. The most complex entities known, animals all follow one simple developmental formula: first get the overall design (body plan, vision statement, essay outline) right, then gradually fine-tune the details (e.g. organs, weekly targets, sentences). This provides such a fundamental advantage that during evolution it's as if Linux had won - nearly all animals from worms to humans "start up" using one operating system, about 13 master coding regions (the Hox genes) that enforce this hierarchical progression. For biologists, the discovery of this universal module emphatically underscored the likelihood of gaining global insights by studying simple model systems. Our group focuses on the integrated, sequential development of the locomotory organs of the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster, in particular their muscles, nerves and the behaviours they enable. At the top of the command chain, we explore how the Hox genes themselves oversee muscle, nerve and behavioural specialisation along the fruitfly body, by introducing the required differences into the near-identical segments of which the fruit-fly body, like ours, is initially composed. Our other main approach is to examine later implementations of developmental decisions, both the step-by-step differentiation of individual nerve and muscle cells, and the interplay between the two systems: the watching, waiting game played out at neuro-muscular junctions. Our work draws on the tools and concepts of molecular biology, genetics, microscopy and developmental and behavioural biology - whatever is needed to produce a truly holistic understanding of animal locomotion.