Hoxb8 lineage tracing to map spinofugal projections related to motor recovery following spinal cord injury
department or school: Science, Faculty of
department or school: Zoology, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Barraclough, Bridget Nicole
issued: 2025-09-24T21:51:08Z
issued: 2025
related degree: Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: Neural plasticity allows us to form new memories and learn new behaviours. After neurotrauma, it allows adaptation to and, to a limited extent, recovery of lost function. Even following severe injuries such as spinal cord injury (SCI), most of which spare some ascending and descending circuitry, there is a degree of functional restoration that reflects reorganization of remaining neural pathways. Understanding and exploiting mechanisms of spontaneous plasticity is an avenue to generating new approaches to a cure for SCI. To date, most of the experimental work on functional recovery following SCI has focused on descending projections that subserve voluntary movement and locomotion; however, these are initiated and informed by (and are thus dependent upon) sensory input from the body to the brain via âspinofugalâ projections. Here I have exploited the developmental expression of Hoxb8, which is restricted to the spinal cord, to genetically label ascending projections to the cerebellum. A detailed anatomical analysis of four reporter lines identified many unexpected Hoxb8-lineage neuronal and non-neuronal cell types in targeted and untargeted transgenic strains, but because of the near-exclusive restriction of reporter expression to spinofugal projections, Hoxb8FlpOáµáµáµ mice were selected as the best model for assessing the distribution of spinocerebellar projections and their possible structural plasticity. I used a cervical (C3) lateral hemisection model to document the natural history of sensorimotor performance over the first month following injury, employing established and novel behavioural measures. These revealed that many behavioural parameters changed spontaneously with time during the post-injury period, while several did not (i.e. were stable deficits), or did not change with injury at all. Since some of the behaviours which recovered (e.g. those which depend on grasp) normally require cerebellar function, I asked whether plasticity of spinocerebellar pro…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/92428
note: HOXB8 LINEAGE TRACING TO MAP SPINOFUGAL PROJECTIONS RELATED TO MOTOR RECOVERY FOLLOWING SPINAL CORD INJURY by Bridget Nicole Barraclough B.Sc., Queenâs University, 2020 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Zoology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) September 2025 © Bridget Nicole Barraclough, 2025 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: Hoxb8 lineage tracing to map spinofugal projections related to motor recovery following spinal cord injury submitted by Bridget Nicole Barraclough in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Zoology Examining Committee: Matthew Ramer, Associate Professor, Zoology, UBC Supervisor Michael Gordon, Professor, Zoology, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Shernaz Bamji, Professor, Cellular and Physiological Sciences, UBC University Examiner Lara Boyd, Professor, Faculty of Medicine, UBC University Examiner Roy Sillitoe, Professor, Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine External Examiner Additional Supervisory Committee Members: Wolfram Tetzlaff, Professor, Zoology, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Brian MacVicar, Professor, Faculty of Medicine, UBC Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract Neural plasticity allows us to form new memories and learn new behaviours. After neurotrauma, it allows adaptation to and, to a limited extent, recovery of lost function. Even following severe injuries such as spinal cord injury (SCI), most of which spare some ascending and descending circuitry, there is a degree of functional restoration that reflects reorganization of remaining neural pathways. Understanding and exploiting mechanisms of spontaneous plasticity is an avenue to generating new approaches to a cure for SCI. To date, most of the experimental wo…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2025-11
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0450237
language: eng
degree discipline: Zoology
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
contributor: Ramer, Matthew
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/92428