Regeneration and repair in the nervous system articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The contribution of satellite glia to peripheral nerve regeneration is unclear. Here, the authors show that satellite glia are transcriptionally distinct from Schwann cells, share similarities with astrocytes, and, upon injury, they contribute to axon regeneration via Fasn-PPARα signalling pathway.

    • Oshri Avraham
    • , Pan-Yue Deng
    •  & Valeria Cavalli

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a serious and poorly understood medical condition. Here, the authors show that TBI induces long-lasting deficits in brain lymphatic drainage. They report that defects in this drainage pathway provoke severe TBI pathogenesis that can be rescued with VEGF-C treatment.

    • Ashley C. Bolte
    • , Arun B. Dutta
    •  & John R. Lukens

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Severe head injury results in critical damage of blood vessels of the meninges and brain parenchyma. Here, the authors describe key pathways governing meningeal vascular regeneration following head injury, characterizing the differential roles of VEGFR2, Tie2, Dll4 and PDGFRβ signaling.

    • Bong Ihn Koh
    • , Hyuek Jong Lee
    •  & Injune Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spinal cord injury (SCI) often leads to immune dysfunction, but mechanistic insights are still lacking. Here the authors show that SCI alters chemokine signaling and induces long, persisting defects in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell migration, thereby entrapping them in the bone marrow and disrupting peripheral immune homeostasis.

    • Randall S. Carpenter
    • , Jessica M. Marbourg
    •  & Phillip G. Popovich

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    The scar formation that occurs following spinal cord injury has properties that are distinct to scars seen in other areas of the CNS, and in other tissues. Here the authors discuss the components of the spinal cord injury scar and how it can have both detrimental and positive roles in relation to recovery.

    • Elizabeth J. Bradbury
    •  & Emily R. Burnside

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Respiratory failure is one of the leading causes of death following spinal cord injury and it is unclear if normal respiratory motor activity can be recovered after chronic injury-induced paralysis. Here, authors show that treatment with chondroitinase ABC induces robust rescue of breathing up to 1.5 years following complete hemidiaphragm paralysis.

    • Philippa M. Warren
    • , Stephanie C. Steiger
    •  & Jerry Silver

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is unclear how removal of axon debris and initiation of axon regeneration following nerve injury is co-regulated. In this study, the authors show that the extracellular domain (ECD) of the engulfment receptor, CED-1, functions as an adhesion molecule to promote axonal regeneration after injury, independent of its function in phagocytosis

    • Hui Chiu
    • , Yan Zou
    •  & Chieh Chang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While proinflammatory signalling is preventive to axon regrowth, activated macrophages can be beneficial, for example by limiting the inflammation. This study uses mutant zebrafish lines that lack macrophages and/or microglia to show that peripheral macrophages are necessary in axon regrowth following complete transection of spinal cord.

    • Themistoklis M. Tsarouchas
    • , Daniel Wehner
    •  & Catherina G. Becker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Demyelination failure in multiple sclerosis (MS) may contribute to the disease progression. This study shows that chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans (CSPGs) can inhibit remyelination in an animal model of MS via CSPG binding with the receptor PTPσ on oligodendrocyte progenitor cells, and disruption of this interaction can promote recovery in the animal models of MS.

    • Fucheng Luo
    • , Amanda Phuong Tran
    •  & Yan Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The optimal type or regional origin of stem cells for regenerative applications in the nervous system has not yet been established. Here the authors show that human neuroepithelial stem cells from the developing spinal cord, but not those from the developing cortex, show good host-graft interaction when transplanted to rodent models of spinal cord injury.

    • Maria Teresa Dell’Anno
    • , Xingxing Wang
    •  & Stephen M. Strittmatter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    G3BP1 is RasGAP SH3 domain binding protein 1 that interacts with 48S pre-initiation complex when translation is stalled. Here, Twiss and colleagues show that neuronal G3BP1 can negatively regulate axonal mRNA translation, and inhibit axonal regeneration after injury.

    • Pabitra K. Sahoo
    • , Seung Joon Lee
    •  & Jeffery L. Twiss

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Apoptotic cells display surface signals such as phosphatidlyserines that are recognized by phagocytes via engulfment signal receptors. Here, the authors show how one such receptor, transthyretin-like protein 11, plays a role in initiating axon regeneration in the peripheral nervous system.

    • Naoki Hisamoto
    • , Anna Tsuge
    •  & Kunihiro Matsumoto

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Axons of the peripheral nervous system regenerate along Schwann cells following injury. Here, the authors show that regenerating axons follow pioneer axons and this process is mediated by lipoprotein receptor-related protein 4 (Lrp4), a protein otherwise known for its role in synapse formation.

    • Katherine D. Gribble
    • , Lauren J. Walker
    •  & Michael Granato

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors have previously shown that membrane voltage can influence embryonic patterning during development. Here, the authors computationally model how nicotine disrupts Xenopus embryogenesis by perturbing voltage gradients, and rescue nicotine-inducted defects with HCN2 channel expression.

    • Vaibhav P. Pai
    • , Alexis Pietak
    •  & Michael Levin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding how transplanted cells interact with the host nervous system will be important for cell based neural regeneration approaches. Here, the authors study the sensory fate of neural progenitor cell grafts transplanted to the injured spinal cord, and show that host axons retain the ability to distinguish appropriate and inappropriate graft targets.

    • Jennifer N. Dulin
    • , Andrew F. Adler
    •  & Mark H. Tuszynski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Existing methods to improve motor function after stroke include non-specific neuromodulatory approaches. Here the authors use an automated method of analysis of reaching behaviour in rodents to show that optogenetic stimulation of intact corticospinal tract fibres leads to restoration of prior motor functions, rather than compensatory acquisition of new movements.

    • A. S. Wahl
    • , U. Büchler
    •  & M. E. Schwab

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The cystic cavity that develops following injuries to brain or spinal cord is a major obstacle. Here the authors show an injection of imidazole poly(organophosphazenes), a hydrogel with thermosensitive sol–gel transition behavior, almost completely eliminates cystic cavities in a clinically relevant rat spinal cord injury model.

    • Le Thi Anh Hong
    • , Young-Min Kim
    •  & Byung Gon Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) matching improves graft survival rates after organ transplantation. Here the authors show that in macaques, MHC-matched iPSC-derived neurons provide better engraftment in the brain, with a lower immune response and higher survival of the transplanted neurons.

    • Asuka Morizane
    • , Tetsuhiro Kikuchi
    •  & Jun Takahashi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Previous studies have used fluorescently labelled cells to demonstrate the incorporation of transplanted photoreceptor precursors into the mouse retina. Here, the authors show that fluorescent proteins are passed between the host and transplanted cells rather than migration of donor cells into the retina.

    • Mandeep S. Singh
    • , Jasmin Balmer
    •  & Robert E. MacLaren

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neurodegenerative lesions induce sprouting from surviving axons, but the patterns of re-innervation of these collaterals in relation to existing functional networks remains unclear. Here the authors performed long term in vivoimaging in mice, of sprouts from cerebellar climbing fibers after a lesion, and describe the patterns of connectivity relative to functionally active zones.

    • Matasha Dhar
    • , Joshua M. Brenner
    •  & Hiroshi Nishiyama

  • Article |

    A potential therapeutic strategy for spinal cord injury (SCI) is to maintain continuity of damaged axons after contusion, but the viability of such strategies depends on the degree to which initially injured axons can recover. Here the authors use morphological and molecular in vivoimaging after contusion SCI in mice, to show that injured axons persist in a metastable state for hours.

    • Philip R. Williams
    • , Bogdan-Nicolae Marincu
    •  & Thomas Misgeld

  • Article |

    Activation of the mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 in mature retinal ganglion cells promotes axonal regeneration in a mouse optic nerve crush model but the role of its downstream effectors is not clear. Here the authors show that S6K1 plays a dual role in axon regeneration, whereas 4E-BP inhibition is not sufficient but necessary for axon regeneration.

    • Liu Yang
    • , Linqing Miao
    •  & Yang Hu

  • Article |

    Studies focussing on pharmacological manipulation of the kinase GSK3 have provided contradictory roles on the involvement of GSK3 in axon regeneration. Here Gobrecht et al., study transgenic mice with altered GSK3 signalling and show that in contrast to previous reports, GSK3 enhances axon regeneration.

    • Philipp Gobrecht
    • , Marco Leibinger
    •  & Dietmar Fischer

  • Article |

    Retinoblastoma protein (Rb) is a key inhibitor of cell cycle progression and its deletion is implicated in cancer. Here, the authors show that Rb is also involved in regulating nerve regeneration, since silencing Rb promotes neurite outgrowth and recovery of sensorimotor responses after nerve injury.

    • Kimberly J. Christie
    • , Anand Krishnan
    •  & Douglas Zochodne

  • Article |

    The reorganization of the mammalian somatosensory cortex is a common consequence of sensory deafferentation. Here, Kambi et al.show that reorganization of the cuneate nucleus in the brainstem is essential for the large-scale reorganization of the somatosensory cortex following sensory deafferentation in monkeys.

    • Niranjan Kambi
    • , Priyabrata Halder
    •  & Neeraj Jain

  • Article |

    Epigenetic codes translate external stimuli into targeted and long-lasting gene regulation. In this study, the authors show that regenerative retrograde signalling activates the epigenetic modifying enzyme PCAF, inducing gene expression and promoting axon regeneration in a mouse spinal cord injury model.

    • Radhika Puttagunta
    • , Andrea Tedeschi
    •  & Simone Di Giovanni

  • Article |

    Expression of the transcription factor SOX2 reprogrammes astrocytes into neuroblasts in the adult mouse striatum. Here, the authors use the same approach in the injured adult mouse spinal cord to convert resident astrocytes into neuroblasts that can mature into synapse-forming neurons.

    • Zhida Su
    • , Wenze Niu
    •  & Chun-Li Zhang

  • Article |

    Axon regeneration is controlled by both positive and negative regulators. In this study, Qin et al. show that KLF4 acts as an intrinsic inhibitor of axon regeneration by antagonizing the cytokine JAK–STAT3 pathway, and that deletion of KLF4 can greatly enhance cytokine-induced axon regeneration.

    • Song Qin
    • , Yuhua Zou
    •  & Chun-Li Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The central nervous system contains glial cells, which have been shown to have an important role in neuronal survival. Haradaet al. use transgenic mouse models to show that TrkB, a receptor for the growth factor brain-derived neurotrophic factor, is required for retinal Müller glial cells to provide neuroprotection and regeneration.

    • Chikako Harada
    • , Xiaoli Guo
    •  & Takayuki Harada

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Regeneration and repair in the nervous system across other nature.com journals