Open AccessGenetic Evidence that Dorsal Spinal Oligodendrocyte Progenitor Cells are Capable of Myelinating Ventral Axons Effectively in Mice
Author(s) -
Minxi Fang,
Qian Yu,
Baiyan Ou,
Hao Huang,
Min Yi,
Binghua Xie,
Adeline Yang,
Mengsheng Qiu,
Xiaofeng Xu
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
neuroscience bulletin/neuroscience bulletin
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1673-7067
pISSN - 1995-8218
DOI - 10.1007/s12264-020-00593-5
Subject(s) - neuroepithelial cell , sonic hedgehog , biology , neuroscience , oligodendrocyte , olig2 , spinal cord , conditional gene knockout , anatomy , ventral nerve cord , progenitor cell , neural stem cell , central nervous system , stem cell , myelin , microbiology and biotechnology , phenotype , signal transduction , genetics , gene
In the developing spinal cord, the majority of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs) are induced in the ventral neuroepithelium under the control of the Sonic Hedgehog (Shh) signaling pathway, whereas a small subset of OPCs are generated from the dorsal neuroepithelial cells independent of the Shh pathway. Although dorsally-derived OPCs (dOPCs) have been shown to participate in local axonal myelination in the dorsolateral regions during development, it is not known whether they are capable of migrating into the ventral region and myelinating ventral axons. In this study, we confirmed and extended the previous study on the developmental potential of dOPCs in the absence of ventrally-derived OPCs (vOPCs). In Nestin-Smo conditional knockout (cKO) mice, when ventral oligodendrogenesis was blocked, dOPCs were found to undergo rapid amplification, spread to ventral spinal tissue, and eventually differentiated into myelinating OLs in the ventral white matter with a temporal delay, providing genetic evidence that dOPCs are capable of myelinating ventral axons in the mouse spinal cord.