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Transcriptional profiling predicts overwhelming homology of schwann cells, olfactory ensheathing cells, and schwann cell‐like glia
Author(s) -
Ulrich Reiner,
Imbschweiler Ilka,
Kalkuhl Arno,
Lehmbecker Annika,
Ziege Susanne,
Kegler Kristel,
Becker Kathrin,
Deschl Ulrich,
Wewetzer Konstantin,
Baumgärtner Wolfgang
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
glia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.954
H-Index - 164
eISSN - 1098-1136
pISSN - 0894-1491
DOI - 10.1002/glia.22700
Subject(s) - olfactory ensheathing glia , biology , schwann cell , microbiology and biotechnology , cell type , neurite , transplantation , olfactory mucosa , transcriptome , cell , spinal cord , central nervous system , pathology , in vitro , neuroscience , olfactory system , gene expression , olfactory bulb , gene , medicine , genetics , biochemistry
Schwann cells (SCs), olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs), and central nervous system Schwann cell‐like glia (SG) represent a group of nerve growth factor receptor p75 (NGFR)‐positive cells, originating from different tissues. Because of their pro‐regenerative capacities, these cells are subjects in experimental transplantation‐based therapies of spinal cord trauma. The objective of this study was to compare the transcriptomes of uninfected and canine distemper virus‐infected OECs, SCs, SG and fibroblasts (FBs) derived from four beagle dogs and cultured under identical conditions in vitro , employing canine genome 2.0 arrays (Affymetrix). Here, we observed a complete lack of transcriptional differerences between OECs and SG, a high similarity of OECs/SG to SCs, and a marked difference of SCs and OECs/SG towards FBs. Differentially expressed genes possibly involved in the maintenance of cell type‐specific identity included an up‐regulation of HOXD8 and HOXC4 in SCs, and an up‐regulation of CNTNAP2 and EFEMP1 in OECs/SG. We identified cell type‐specific biomarkers employing supervised clustering with a K‐nearest‐neighbors algorithm and correlation‐based feature selection. Thereby AQP1 and SCRG1 were predicted to be the most powerful biomarkers distinguishing SCs from OECs/SG. Immunofluorescence confirmed a higher expression of SCRG1 in OECs and SG, and conversely a higher expression of AQP1 in SCs in vitro . Furthermore, canine and murine olfactory nerves showed SCRG1‐positive, AQP1‐negative OECs and/or axons, whereas sciatic nerves displayed multifocal non‐myelinated, AQP1‐positive, SCRG1‐negative cells. Conclusively, OECs/SG are suggested to be a uniform cell type differing only in the tissue of origin and highly related to SCs. GLIA 2014;62:1559–1581