Axons in central nervous system (CNS) do not regenerate spontaneously after injuries such as stroke and traumatic spinal cord injury. Both intrinsic and extrinsic factors are responsible for the regeneration failure. Although intensive research efforts have been invested on extrinsic regeneration inhibitors, the extent to which glial inhibitors contribute to the regeneration failure in vivo sti...

Following trauma, the CNS of the medicinal leech, unlike the mammalian CNS, has a strong capacity to regenerate neurites and synaptic connections that restore normal function. In this study, we show that this regenerative process is enhanced by a controlled bacterial infection, suggesting that induction of regeneration of normal CNS function may depend critically upon the coinitiation of an imm...

To test the importance of glia during regeneration of mechanosensory neuron axons in the leech central nervous system, individual glial cells that ensheathed the axons were destroyed by intracellular protease injection. Recordings with intracellular microelectrodes showed that glial-desheathed axons re-established synaptic connections with their appropriate target cell, a motor neuron, as frequ...

In this issue of Neuron, Tedeschi et al. (2016) describe the voltage-gated calcium channel subunit alpha2delta2 as a developmental switch from axon elongation to synapse formation and transmission that doubles as a suppressor of axon regeneration, providing a molecular clue for the synaptic stabilization hypothesis of CNS regeneration failure.

In this issue of Neuron, Han et al. (2016) and Cartoni et al. (2016) define a critical role of mitochondrial transport for successful axon regeneration after injury and provide new insights into intrinsic mechanisms controlling neuronal regeneration capacity in worms and mice.

Upregulation of the transcription factor c-Jun has been correlated with axon regeneration after injury in multiple types of neurons. In this issue of Neuron, Raivich et al. use a nervous system-specific mutant to provide genetic evidence that c-Jun is necessary for efficient axon regeneration.

Mechanistic studies of axon growth during development are beneficial to the search for neuron-intrinsic regulators of axon regeneration. Here, we discovered that, in the developing neuron from rat, Akt signaling regulates axon growth and growth cone formation through phosphorylation of serine 14 (S14) on Inhibitor of DNA binding 2 (Id2). This enhances Id2 protein stability by means of escape fr...