The generation of a functional nervous system is dependent on precise pathfinding of axons during development. This pathfinding is directed by the distribution of local and long-range guidance cues, the latter of which are believed to be distributed in gradients. Gradients of guidance cues have been associated with growth cone function for over a hundred years. However, little is known about th...

The proper guidance of migrating growth cones relies on the balance of multiple guidance cues in the embryonic environment. In addition to guidance cues, growth cones are in contact with other substrates that may contribute to the pathfinding of neurons. For example, in the developing insect peripheral nervous system, pioneer neurons migrate on and between layers of the basal lamina. Previous s...

Successful axon pathfinding requires both correct patterning of tissues, which will later harbor axonal tracts, and precise localization of axon guidance cues along these tracts at the time of axon outgrowth. Retinal ganglion cell (RGC) axons grow towards the optic disc in the central retina, where they turn to exit the eye through the optic nerve. Normal patterning of the optic disc and stalk ...

Purpose: A previous paper proposed a bidirectional A* search algorithm for quickly finding meaningful paths in Wikidata that leverages semantic distances between entities as part of the heuristics. However, work lacks an optimization algorithm’s hyperparameters and evaluation on large dataset among others. The purpose present is to address these open points. Methodology: Approaches aimed at enh...

Axon pathfinding is orchestrated by numerous guidance cues, including Slits and their Robo receptors, but it remains unclear how information from multiple cues is integrated or filtered. Robo3, a Robo family member, allows commissural axons to reach and cross the spinal cord midline by antagonizing Robo1/2-mediated repulsion from midline-expressed Slits and potentiating deleted in colorectal ca...

Desirable difficulty in a game level is achieved by varying geometry of arena or placement of guards/obstacles inside it. Designing such levels requires a rigorous Design-Test cycle, for which the testing can be automated using Pathfinding algorithms. In this thesis, we propose an algorithm for roadmap generation for a player using a modified Medial skeleton of a 3D representation (2D spatial &...

Correct pathfinding by Drosophila photoreceptor axons requires recruitment of p21-activated kinase (Pak) to the membrane by the SH2-SH3 adaptor Dock. Here, we identify the guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) Trio as another essential component in photoreceptor axon guidance. Regulated exchange activity of one of the two Trio GEF domains is critical for accurate pathfinding. This GEF domain...

We present a sampling-based framework for multirobot motion planning which incorporates an implicit representation of a roadmap with a novel approach for pathfinding in geometrically embedded graphs. Our pathfinding algorithm, discrete-RRT (dRRT), is an adaption of the celebrated RRT algorithm, for the discrete case of a graph. By rapidly exploring the high-dimensional configuration space repre...