Cellular NeuroscienceResearch PaperCellular organization of the central canal ependymal zone, a niche of latent neural stem cells in the adult mammalian spinal cord
Section snippets
Animals
Experiments were conducted in accordance with the guidelines of the Canadian Council of Animal Care and were approved by the institutional Animal Care committee. A total of 70 two-month-old CD1 mice (Charles River Laboratories, St. Constant, QC, Canada) were used. For bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) incorporation experiments, mice were administered three 100 μl intraperitoneal injections of BrdU (Sigma, 1.5 mg/injection) at 3 hour intervals, and were sacrificed either 1 or 21 days later.
Neurosphere cultures from the adult spinal cord
Mice were
Isolation and characterization of neurospheres from the adult mouse lumbar spinal cord
Multipotent neurospheres can be cultured from the adult mouse spinal cord (Weiss et al., 1996, Meletis et al., 2008). We were able to generate neurosphere cultures from the adult mouse lumbar spinal cord (Fig. 1) that expanded rapidly in vitro (Fig. 1a–d) and expressed typical neural stem cell markers such as Nestin, Sox2 and CD133 (Fig. 1e–j). Although neurogenesis does not occur in the adult spinal cord, spinal cord-derived neurospheres differentiated into neurons, astrocytes and
Discussion
Unlike the highly neurogenic astrocyte-like stem cells of the forebrain SVZ, ependymal cells of the spinal cord are normally relatively quiescent, only displaying stem cell properties following tissue injury or in culture (Frisen et al., 1995, Johansson et al., 1999, Martens et al., 2002, Meletis et al., 2008). In the present study, we analyzed the cellular organization of the spinal cord ependymal cell niche. We show that the spinal cord ependymal zone possesses many key features of the SVZ
Conclusion
Spinal cord ependymal cells have neural stem cell potential both in vitro and following tissue injury in vivo. Here, we found that they do not display multilineage potential or the ability to produce transit amplifying progenitors under normal conditions. Analysis of the ependymal cell niche revealed a previously unrecognized level of cellular heterogeneity and complexity, and indicated that many of the key elements of the forebrain stem cell niche are in fact present. However, these elements
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by funds from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the Université de Montréal. KF is a Canada Research Chair in Stem Cell Neurobiology. The authors are grateful to Meriem Bouab for helpful comments, to Dr. Fanie Barnabé-Heider for critical reading of the manuscript, and to Dr. Mustapha Riad and Dr. Laurent Descarries for technical advice.
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