Title of Document: PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF LAMPREY SPINAL CORD REGENERATION: ADAPTIVE VS. MALADAPTIVE RECOVERY Carlos Luna Lopez, Ph. D., 2014 Directed By: Associate Professor, Helim Aranda-Espinoza, Fischell Department of Bioengineering Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a physical trauma that can result in paralysis and even death; to date no treatment exists that can successfully promote functional ...

Uncontrolled, excessive inflammation contributes to the secondary tissue damage of traumatic spinal cord, and HMGB1 is highlighted for initiation of a vicious self-propagating inflammatory circle by release from necrotic cells or immune cells. Several regenerative-competent vertebrates have evolved to circumvent the second damages during the spontaneous spinal cord regeneration with an unknown ...

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a permanent affliction, which affects the central nervous system (CNS) motor and sensory nerves, resulting in paralysis beneath site. To date, there no functional recovery therapy for SCI, lack of clarity regarding many complexes dynamic events occurring after SCI. Many non-mammalian organisms can regenerate severe such as teleost fishes, urodele amphibians, larval s...

Adult zebrafish, in contrast to mammals, regrow axons descending from the brainstem after spinal cord transection. L1.1, a homolog of the mammalian recognition molecule L1, is upregulated by brainstem neurons during axon regrowth. However, its functional relevance for regeneration is unclear. Here, we show with a novel morpholino-based approach that reducing L1.1 protein expression leads to imp...

Adult zebrafish, in contrast to mammals, regrow axons descending from the brainstem after spinal cord transection. L1.1, a homolog of the mammalian recognition molecule L1, is upregulated by brainstem neurons during axon regrowth. However, its functional relevance for regeneration is unclear. Here, we show with a novel morpholino-based approach that reducing L1.1 protein expression leads to imp...

In contrast to mammals, zebrafish regenerate spinal motor neurons. During regeneration, developmental signals are re-deployed. Here, we show that, during development, diffuse serotonin promotes spinal motor neuron generation from pMN progenitor cells, leaving interneuron numbers unchanged. Pharmacological manipulations and receptor knockdown indicate that serotonin acts at least in part via 5-H...

Several recent studies report that axon regeneration can be induced in the mature mammalian nervous system by novel treatments or genetic manipulations. In assessing these reports, it is important to be mindful of the history of regeneration research, which is littered with the corpses of studies that reported regeneration that later proved incorrect. One important reason is the “spared axon co...

The mammalian CNS is usually not capable of regeneration. However, conditioning dorsal root ganglion neurons by first lesioning their peripheral axons allows for regeneration of their central axons later on within the spinal cord. New work shows that, even if the sequence of lesioning is reversed, regeneration through the CNS lesion can rapidly occur under certain conditions.

sue is known as transdifferentiation, in which the local cells are able to dedifferentiate (lose the characteristics of their origin) and subsequently redifferentiate. Our lab has shown by transient lineage tracing that spinal cord cells (radial glial cells) can migrate into surrounding tissues and contribute to non-neural cells during regeneration [Science 298 (2002) 1993–1996]. In order to fo...

The influence of bone marrow stem cells on regeneration of spinal cord in rats was investigated. Young adult male Wistar rats were used (n=22). Focal injury of spinal cord white matter at Th10 level was produced using our original non-laminectomy method by means of high-pressured air stream. Cells from tibial and femoral bone marrow of 1-month old rats (n=3) were cultured, labeled with BrdU/Hoe...