Genealogy of neurons: 50 years of reconstructing the evolution of nervous systems

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Abstract

On November 11, Dmitry Antonovich Sakharov (1930–2024), a unique person, mentor, scientist and poet, passed away. This year, the world community celebrates the 50th anniversary of the publication of his book “Genealogy of Neurons”, which had a profound influence on several generations of neuroscientists. The hypotheses, strategies and experimental approaches presented in this book remain relevant and inspiring today. We outline Sakharov’s hypotheses on neuronal polyphyly and the functional significance of neuronal heterogeneity in light of recent comparative, genomics, and single-cell transcriptomic data.

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L. L. Moroz

University of Florida

Author for correspondence.
Email: leonidlmoroz@gmail.com
United States, Florida

V. E. Dyakonova

N.K. Koltsov Institute of Developmental Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Email: dyakonova.varvara@gmail.com
Russian Federation, Moscow, 119334, ul. Vavilova, 26

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2. Dmitry Antonovich Sakharov, scientist and poet, 2012 Photo: Vyacheslav Korotikhin.

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3. Fig. 1. Nudibranchs are popular neurobiological models. Tritonia tetraquetra (Pallas, 1788) [formerly known as T. diomedea], Clione limacina (Phipps, 1774) from Friday Harbor, USA, Aplysia californica (J. G. Cooper, 1863) from California, USA. Photo: Leonid Moroz.

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4. Fig. 2. A — MCC of different mollusks, drawing by Sakharov (Sakharov, 1974); B — dorsal view of the living central nervous system of Tritonia with giant neurons of the MCC; some other giant neurons are shown by asterisks; photo: Leonid Moroz.

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5. Fig. 3. The principle of hierarchical classification of neurons based on the similarity of transcriptomes of single neurons. The number of groups at each hierarchical level is indicated (according to the article by Yao et al., 2023).

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