News

New tutorial on lower urinary tract innervation - by Janet Keast and Michelle Southard-Smith

Jun 28, 2021

We have just added a new tutorial among our educational offerings on gudmap.org: Lower Urinary Tract Innervation and its Development, provided by our very own Janet Keast, University of Melbourne, and Michelle Southard-Smith, Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

From the tutorial introduction:

The urinary bladder is present in all mammals and serves to hold urine excreted by the kidneys. In humans, urination depends on appropriate innervation of the bladder so that urination can be performed at a socially acceptable time and place. In other mammals, urination is influenced by social hierarchies (scent marking) and holding urine to avoid predator detection. These processes require innervation of the muscular wall of the bladder (detrusor) to contract at the appropriate time and the urethra with its sphincter to maintain continence. This tutorial is focused on the nerves regulating the lower urinary tract (LUT) of rodents, providing specific examples from mice.

Figure 4: Using retrograde tracers to identify neurons that innervate specific structures in the LUT.

Janet and Michelle have created a thorough overview of innervation development with movies, illustrations and links to GUDMAP data.

Check out the full tutorial here: https://www.gudmap.org/tutorials/innervation/