Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun biochemistry Any of a class of proteins that assist growing axons to find an appropriate target and to form synapses

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From semaphore + -in

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word semaphorin.

Examples

  • The researchers identified a single-letter change on chromosome 5 near a gene called semaphorin 5A, which is believed to help guide the growth of neurons and their long progressions, called axons.

    Autism Vox 2009

  • Recently, highly unusual proteins of the Mical family of enzymes have been found to associate with the cytoplasmic portion of plexins, which are large cell-surface semaphorin receptors, and to mediate axon guidance, synaptogenesis, dendritic pruning and other cell morphological changes

    Naturejobs - All Jobs Ruei-Jiun Hung 2010

  • Tran saw unusually pronounced "spines" sprouting willy-nilly in peculiar places and in greater numbers on the dendrites in the neurons of semaphorin-lacking and neuropilin-lacking mice compared to the normal wild-type animals.

    Biosingularity 2010

  • Kolodkin, a professor in the neuroscience department at Johns Hopkins and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, discovered and cloned the first semaphorin gene in the grasshopper when he was a postdoctoral fellow.

    Biosingularity 2010

  • The spines of both semaphorin-lacking and neuropilin-lacking mice were dramatically enlarged, compared to those of the smaller, spherical-looking spines in the wild-type mice.

    Biosingularity 2010

  • Similar to the cadherins identified in the first study, semaphorin 5A is thought to play an important role in neural development.

    RedOrbit News - Technology 2010

  • Similar to the cadherins identified in the first study, semaphorin 5A is thought to play an important role in neural development.

    THE MEDICAL NEWS Editors 2010

  • We found that Mical is both necessary and sufficient for semaphorin-plexin-mediated F-actin reorganization in vivo.

    Naturejobs - All Jobs Ruei-Jiun Hung 2010

  • Similar to the cadherins identified in the first study, semaphorin 5A is thought to play an important role in neural development.

    EurekAlert! - Breaking News 2010

  • Using two lines of mice - one missing semaphorin and another missing neuropilin, its receptor - postdoctoral fellow Tracy Tran used a classic staining method called the Golgi technique to look at the anatomy of nerve cells from mouse brains.

    Biosingularity 2010

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.