Axonal Transport

Authors: Anthony Brown

Publish Date: 2016

Volume: , Issue: , Pages: 333-379

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Abstract

Axons are long slender cylindrical projections of neurons that enable these cells to communicate directly with other cells in the body over long distances up to a meter or more in large animals Remarkably however most axonal components originate in the nerve cell body at one end of the axon and must be shipped out along the axon by mechanisms of intracellular motility In addition signals from the axon and its environment must be conveyed back to the nerve cell body to modulate the nature and composition of the outbound traffic The outward movement from the cell body toward the axon tip is called anterograde transport and the movement in the opposite direction back toward the cell body is called retrograde transport This bidirectional transport known collectively as axonal transport is not fundamentally different from the pathways of macromolecular and membrane traffic found in other parts of the neuron or indeed in any eukaryotic cell but it is unique for the volume and scale of the traffic required to maintain these long processes

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