Glial cells have nothing on perennial stand-up comic Rodney Dangerfield, famous for his grammatically challenged signature tagline, “I don’t get no respect.” Despite comprising 90 percent of the human brain, glial cells, whose name is derived from the Greek word for glue, were considered just that: supporting structures for the “important” components of the brain, cells called neurons. But glial cells just may help scientists understand one of neurobiology’s biggest questions: how does the brain work?

Rockefeller University’s Shai Shaham tries to answer this question by studying the roundworm, C. elegans. Shaham, who heads the only laboratory in the world that studies glial cells in the roundworm’s nervous system, will take students on a tour of the nematode’s 56 glial cells and 302 neurons to explain how scientists can explore the workings of more complex brains by studying a simple model organism.

The remarkable C. elegans offers other practical advantages for scientists. For example, it has many cell types that also are present in vertebrates, but its DNA code, or genome, is not as large as that of vertebrates. Its physical transparency allows researchers to watch its cells divide, and it has a short generation time.

In addition, the roundworm is “freezable” for dozens of years; and when thawed, it lives. The worm also reproduces sexually with both a male and a hermaphrodite sex, the latter of which can self-propagate. In fact, nearly every C. elegans researcher in the world uses worms that are descended from a single C. elegans from Bristol, England.

In the brain, glia are a major organizing force. These cells undergo elaborate structural changes to create boundaries and compartments that organize the brain. At a large scale, they determine the paths along which neurons will migrate, and at a small scale they isolate regions of individual neurons and create local environments.

Scientists are beginning to understand the crucial role glia play in spinal cord regeneration and such neurodegenerative diseases as Alzheimer’s. Recently scientists have shown that glia respond to neuronal activity and send signals to neurons that induce long-term changes in synapse strength. Thus, through their interactions with neurons, glia also may play a role in learning and memory.

About Shai Shaham

Assistant Professor Shai Shaham, who heads the Laboratory of Developmental Genetics at The Rockefeller University, studies the role of glia in the development and function of the nervous system. His model system is C. elegans, which contains 56 neuron- associated cells that are strikingly similar to vertebrate glia. Shaham and his Rockefeller University colleagues want to understand how these cells develop, acquire their morphologies and regulate neuronal activity. They are using laser ablation and time-lapse microscopy as well as genomic and genetic approaches to address these issues.

Other research in his lab focuses on molecular events underlying the process of programmed cell death, which occurs during the development of all multicellular animals and is misregulated in many human diseases, including cancer and stroke.

Before joining Rockefeller, Shaham was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco. As a graduate student in Robert Horvitz’s lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he showed that a mutant gene called ced-3, which was previously shown by another student in the lab to prevent cell death, encoded the founding member of the caspase family of protein cleaving enzymes. This finding identified for the first time a biochemical signature for cell death. Horvitz, who went on to win the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his lab’s work on cell death, invited five of his graduate students — including Shaham — to travel to Stockholm to participate in the Nobel festivities.

About The Rockefeller University

Since the university was founded in 1901 as the first biomedical research institute in the U.S., Rockefeller scientists have made significant achievements in medicine and science, as well as in the graduate training of future scientists. Research advances include the discovery in the 1940s that DNA is the carrier of genetic information; development of the AIDS “cocktail” drug therapy in the 1990s; and, this year, the isolation of a potentially powerful new agent to wipe out millions of anthrax bacteria within seconds.

A total of 23 scientists associated with The Rockefeller University have been honored with the Nobel Prize since the university's founding over 100 years ago, including President Paul Nurse, Ph.D., in 2001 and Roderick MacKinnon, M.D., in 2003.

The Rockefeller University Holiday Lectures on Science were established in 1959 by Alfred E. Mirsky, a biochemist and Rockefeller University librarian. Mirsky modeled these lectures on a popular series of science lectures for children pioneered in London in 1827 by Michael Faraday — known as the greatest experimenter in the history of science.