Summary: The central nervous system’s minimal regenerative ability makes spinal cord injuries (SCI) challenging to treat. A new research reveals that while ependymal cells in the spinal cord present little maintenance possible, astrocytes can transdifferentiate into oligodendrocytes, aiding in neurogenesis.
This restorative process is further enhanced by efficient material transplantation, according to researchers. These findings emphasize the crucial role that astrocytes play and provide a promising strategy for the development of SCI therapies.
Important Information:
- Ependymal Limitations: Ependymal cells show little development and restricted repair possible post-SCI, particularly in primates.
- Astrocyte Potential: Some astrocytes transdifferentiate into neurones under damage problems, contributing to engraftment.
- Medical Boost: Transplanting useful materials promotes spinal cord restoration and increases astrocyte transdifferentiation.
Origin: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Spinal cord injury (SCI) is still one of the most destructive medical conditions, seriously affecting quality of life and frequently causing permanent disability.
Recovery becomes more challenging when the spinal cord is damaged, which poses a significant challenge in treating SCI. The central nervous system ( CNS ) has a limited capacity for regeneration.
Neuronal stem cells in the lumbar wire change into a variety of complex circuits during growth.
These progenitor cell lose their capacity for regeneration as the spinal cord matures, causing the spinal cord tissues to become less able to recover from an injury. It is crucial to develop new repair strategies for SCI by identifying systemic stem cells with various genealogy potentials in the adult spinal cord.
In a recent study published in , PNAS, experts led by Profs. The renewable mechanisms that underlie SCI repair were investigated by DAI Jianwu and ZHAO Yannan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences ‘ Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology.
The researchers built a foundation for a comprehensive analysis of spinal cord cell behavior by building single-cell genomic directories for both macaque monkey SCI models and human spinal cord development.
Their cross-species analysis of animal and rodent cervical cords revealed fresh insights into the behaviors of ependymal and astrocyte cells following SCI, highlighting their active roles in spinal cord maintenance.
The analysis team discovered that, during spinal cord development, ependymal cells mature and eventually lose their neurological progenitor cell properties, retaining only minimal regenerative capacity.
After injury, ependymal cells displayed minimal activation and demonstrated no significant proliferation or cross-lineage differentiation.
Importantly, the study revealed that primates ‘ post-SCI reactivity is significantly lower than that of rodents, which suggests that primates have a more restricted regenerative potential.
In contrast, astrocytes in the injured spinal cord exhibited significant activation. The researchers discovered that some astrocytes could transdifferentiate into oligodendrocytes under injury-induced conditions, contributing to the remyelination process through single-cell and lineage tracing analyses.
Further investigation revealed an intermediate population of astrocytes with which important transcription factors, like SOX10, promoted their transformation into oligodendrocyte lineage cells.
To enhance the regenerative process, the team introduced functional material transplantation into the injury microenvironment.
This action significantly improved the ability of astrocyte transdifferentiation into oligodendrocytes, suggesting that material transplantation not only lessens the inhibitory effects of the injury site but also provides favorable conditions for creating favourable conditions for promoting remyelination.
This study highlights the transdifferentiation potential of astrocytes and provides compelling evidence of the limited regenerative capacity of ependymal cells in spinal cord injury in adult primates.
Furthermore, the research highlights how microenvironmental modulation can enhance the efficiency of astrocyte-mediated repair, offering a promising approach for future SCI therapies.
About this news about neuroscience and SCI
Author: Na Chen
Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Contact: Na Chen – Chinese Academy of Sciences
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Closed access.
DAI Jianwu et al.,” Insights from single-nucleus transcriptomics and lineage tracing: characterization of progenitor cells in developing and injured spinal cord.” PNAS
Abstract
Insights from single-nucleus transcriptomics and lineage tracing: characterization of progenitor cells in developing and injured spinal cord
Following injury, various mature tissue-resident cells exhibit progenitor traits. However, the existence of endogenous stem cells with multiple lineage potentials in the adult spinal cord continues to be a fascinating area of study.
In this study, we present a cross-species investigation that extends from development to injury. To characterize neural cells in the spinal cord, we used single-nucleus transcriptomic sequencing and genetic lineage tracing.
Our results indicate that ciliated ependymal cells lose the ability to differentiate into neural progenitor genes and to proliferate after NPCs are differentiated within the ventricular zone.
We discovered that ciliated ependymal cells only respond to injury and cannot revert to a developmental progenitor state by combining single-nucleus transcriptome datasets from the rhesus macaque spinal cord injury (SCI) model and developmental human spinal cord datasets.
Through lineage tracing experiments, we interestingly found that astrocytes post-injury transdifferentiated into mature oligodendrocytes.
Further analysis reveals an intermediate-state glial cell population with astrocyte and oligodendrocyte feature genes expressed in adult spinal cords.
After using functional scaffolds to remodel the injury microenvironment, the transition ratio between astrocytes and oligodendrocytes increased.
Our findings, in general, highlight the impressive multilineage potential of astrocytes in the adult spinal cord.
