Three different myelin proteins, Nogo, MAG, and OMgp, inhibit regenerating axons after CNS injury. New work reveals that they all share a common receptor and that blockade of this receptor promotes CNS repair and functional recovery.

Neuregulin 1 acts as an axonal signal that regulates multiple aspects of Schwann cell development including the survival and migration of Schwann cell precursors, the ensheathment of axons and subsequent elaboration of the myelin sheath. To examine the role of this factor in remyelination and repair following nerve injury, we ablated neuregulin 1 in the adult nervous system using a tamoxifen in...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory disease of the CNS that is associated with demyelination and axonal loss, resulting in severe neurological handicap. Current MS therapies mostly target neuroinflammation but have only a little impact on CNS myelin repair. Progress toward treatments that enhance remyelination would therefore represent major advances in MS treatment. Here, we examined th...

Much excitement has been generated by recent work showing that a variety of myelin-forming cell types can elicit remyelination and facilitate axonal regeneration in animal models of demyelination and axonal transection. These cells include peripheral-myelin-forming cells, such as Schwann cells and olfactory ensheathing cells. In addition, progenitor cells derived from the subventricular zone of...

Oligodendrocyte (OL) differentiation and myelin development are complex events regulated by numerous signal transduction factors. Here, we report that phosphoinositide-3 kinase enhancer L (PIKE-L) is required for OL development and myelination. PIKE-L expression is up-regulated when oligodendrocyte progenitor cells commit to differentiation. Conversely, depleting phosphoinositide-3 kinase enhan...

Since myelination and remyelination both involve investing an axon with a myelin sheath, a plausible hypothesis is that the two processes involve the expression of similar transcription factors. In this study we have addressed this hypothesis by comparing the expression of messenger RNA of Gtx, a homeodomain transcription factor expressed within oligodendrocytes during myelination, with the exp...

This radioautographic study was designed to localize the cytological sites involved in the incorporation of a lipid precursor into the myelin and the myelin-related cell of the peripheral nervous system. Both myelinating and fully myelinated cultures of rat dorsal root ganglia were exposed to a 30-min pulse of tritiated choline and either fixed immediately or allowed 6 or 48 hr of chase incubat...

The length of myelin sheaths affects conduction speed along axons and information propagation. It has recently become clear that myelin may be adaptively modified to modulate circuit function, implying that length remodeling of myelin sheaths should occur. However, direct evidence for such events is lacking. We have investigated how myelination patterns are formed, maintained, and remodeled usi...

Impaired remyelination is critical to neuroinflammation in multiple sclerosis (MS), which causes chronic and relapsing neurological impairments. Recent studies revealed that immunomodulatory activity of statins in an experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) model of MS are via depletion of isoprenoids (farnesyl-pyrophosphate and geranylgeranyl-pyrophosphate) rather than cholesterol in im...