Akt has been implicated in pro-survival and anti-apoptotic activities in many cell types, including dorsal root ganglion (DRG) and spinal motor neurons. In this immunohistochemical study we have monitored phosphorylated Akt (p-Akt) levels in adult mouse DRGs and spinal cord following unilateral peripheral sciatic nerve transection (axotomy) or carrageenan-induced inflammation. In control animal...

Purpose. Retinal ganglion cells die by apoptosis after axotomy, and this process may reflect altered expression of cell-death genes. Several of these genes, including bcl-2, bcl-x, and bax, share homology at the amino acid level in the BH1 and BH2 domains, through which they also interact. To understand their role in the neuronal response to axotomy, the authors studied their expression in the ...

PURPOSE To investigate whether retinal ganglion cell death in experimental glaucoma and after axotomy occurs by apoptosis. METHODS Chronic elevated eye pressure was produced in 20 monkey eyes, and the optic nerve was transected unilaterally in the orbit of 10 monkeys and 14 rabbits. Sixteen monkey and 14 rabbit eyes were studied as normal controls. Analytic methods included light and electron...

Motoneurons require neurotrophic factors for their survival and axonal projection during development, as well as nerve regeneration. By using the axotomy-induced neuronal death paradigm and adenovirus-mediated gene transfer, we attempted to gain insight into the functional significances of major growth factor receptor downstream cascades, Ras-extracellular signal-regulated kinase (Ras-ERK) path...

Mature neurons have diminished intrinsic regenerative capacity. Axotomy of the peripheral branch of adult dorsal root ganglia (a "conditioning" lesion) triggers a transcription-dependent axon growth program. Here, we show that this growth program requires the function of the transcription factor Smad1. After peripheral axotomy, neuronal Smad1 is upregulated, and phosphorylated Smad1 accumulates...

Agrin is an extracellular matrix protein that has been implicated as a synaptogenic agent in the peripheral and central nervous systems. Both the level of expression and pattern of alternative splicing of agrin mRNA are developmentally regulated. As a step toward identifying signals important in regulating agrin gene expression in neurons, we examined the effects of postganglionic axotomy or pr...

Hemisection of the adult rat spinal cord at T9 transects the ascending ipsilateral axons of Clarke's nucleus (CN) neurons and the descending contralateral axons of red nucleus (RN) neurons. Eight weeks following axotomy, 30% of CN neurons and 22% of RN neurons die. Since both nuclei receive glutamatergic input, we wished to examine the possibility that glutamatergic excitotoxicity contributes t...

Axotomy of the sciatic nerve have been documented to cause neuronal loss, especially in newborn rats. Few works have focused on time course of neuronal loss and the type of cell death, which occurs after axotomy. Forty rat pups were anesthetized by hypothermia and the right sciatic nerve transected at five days of their age and the left side was used as control. The operated animals were sacrif...

  Background and Objective: As apoptotic cell death is extremely involved in physiological development and many pathological situations such as cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, the understanding of its molecular machinery can be useful in designing new therapeutic strategies. The present study investigated the temporal expression of the proapoptotic protein Bax in adult spinal motoneuron...