Microfluidic-based fluorescent exclusion method allows to tackle the issue of neuronal growth from a volume perspective. Based on this technology, we studied the two main actin-rich structures accompanying the early stages of neuron development, i.e. growth cones, located at the tip of growing neuronal processes, and propagative actin waves. Our work reveals that growth cones tend to loose volume during their forward motion, as do actin waves during their journey from the cell body to the tip of neuronal processes, before the total transfer of their remaining volume to the growth cone. Actin waves seem thus to supply material to increasingly distant growth cones as neurons develop. In addition, our work may suggest the existence of a membrane recycling phenomena associated to actin waves as a pulsatile anterograde source of material and by a continuous retrograde transport.

基于微流体的荧光排除方法允许从体积角度解决神经元生长问题。基于这项技术，我们研究了伴随神经元发育早期阶段的两种主要富含肌动蛋白的结构，即位于生长神经元过程尖端的生长锥和传播肌动蛋白波。我们的工作表明，生长锥在向前运动期间往往会减少体积，就像肌动蛋白波在从细胞体到神经元突起尖端的过程中一样，在它们的剩余体积全部转移到生长锥之前。因此，随着神经元的发育，肌动蛋白波似乎为越来越远的生长锥提供物质。此外，