Hong Kong

Hongde Liu, Qirui Liang, Meiling Zhu, Wei Li, Shiguo Liu, Ling Zhang, Shaolin Chen, Yongfa Kong, and Jingjun Xu|

Penghong Liu, Xinzheng Zhang, Zenghong Ma, Wei Cai, Lei Wang, and Jingjun Xu|

Zeng Hao; Tian Tian; Sun Tongqing [School of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071 (China); Kong Yongfa; Chen Shaolin; Zhang Ling; Rupp, Romano [MOE Key Laboratory of Weak-Light Nonlinear Photonics and TEDA Applied Physics School, Nankai University, Tianjin 300457 (China); Xu Jingjun [School of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071 (China); MOE Key Laboratory of Weak-Light Nonlinear Photonics and TEDA Applied Physics School, Nankai University, Tianjin 300457 (China)|

Guoquan Zhang, Nouel Y. Kamber, Jingjun Xu, Simin Liu, Qian Sun, and Guangyin Zhang|

Corresponding authors: Xu Jingjun - Sun Qian|

First of all, the mutated fruit flies had trouble moving around. When the researchers examined the synapses in these flies, they found that half of them were gone. The synapses that remained were deformed, causing them to send out less chemical signals. The researchers, led by Jingjun Li, a graduate student in neurobiology in the UNC School of Medicine, concluded that neurexin is required for the growth of synapses, for the maintenance of their structure and for their function.|