Meeting Abstract
Increasing evidence from multiple systems suggests that the role of the nervous system extends beyond the function, maintenance and behavior of adult metazoans to include contributions to multiple aspects of development. The peripheral nervous system has been shown to regulate morphogenesis, patterning and stem cell maintenance and differentiation. With essential roles in orchestrating development, nerves and neural signals can become a conduit for environmental signals to influence development in a coordinated manner, across multiple tissue types and even throughout the whole organism. Furthermore, temporal or spatial changes in neural development could alter morphological and functional phenotypes and thus contribute to the evolution of species. Here, we synthesize the developmental, cellular and molecular mechanisms by which neural signals alter development to gain insight into organismal plasticity and evolution.
