Endocrine Abstracts

The neuroendocrine hypothalamus is located at the base of our brain and is important for controlling various physiologies, such as hunger, thirst, thermoregulation, and reproduction. Despite considerable knowledge about the hormones that regulate these physiologies and the circuits responsible for transmitting their cues, very little known about the developmental programs that govern hypothalamic formation the first place. Indeed, questions still remain about how individual hypothalamic neurons acquire a particular cell fate and then migrate to an exact location to enable proper circuit formation. For the past several years, our lab has been using mice and zebrafish as complementary model systems to understand neuroendocrine developmental programs.

In this talk, I will outline some of our work exploring the role of the homeodomain transcription factor Rax on conferring a hypothalamic neuronal fate in both mice and zebrafish. I will also share our results of the requirements of the proneural genes Neurog2 and Ascl1 in establishing final positioning of neurons within a nuclear structure in mice. And finally, I will end showing some evidence that endocrine disrupting chemicals, such as bisphenol A, are interfering with these normal developmental programs and leading to lasting changes in the neuroendocrine hypothalamus in zebrafish. Combined, I hope to demonstrate the utility of using mice and zebrafish to study the development of neuroendocrine centers.