Genetic Evidence that Dorsal Spinal Oligodendrocyte Progenitor Cells are Capable of Myelinating Ventral Axons Effectively in Mice
Minxi Fang 1• Qian Yu 1,2• Baiyan Ou 1• Hao Huang 1• Min Yi 1• Binghua Xie 1•Aifen Yang 1• Mengsheng Qiu 1• Xiaofeng Xu 1
1 Institute of Life Sciences, Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Organ Development and Regeneration, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou 310029, China
2 CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China
Abstract
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.
Keywords
Dorsally-derived; OPCs; OPC proliferation; Oligodendrocyte differentiation; Myelination
