0000000000237385
AUTHOR
Antonio Del Sol
Quiescence Modulates Stem Cell Maintenance and Regenerative Capacity in the Aging Brain.
The function of somatic stem cells declines with age. Understanding the molecular underpinnings of this decline is key to counteract age-related disease. Here, we report a dramatic drop in the neural stem cells (NSCs) number in the aging murine brain. We find that this smaller stem cell reservoir is protected from full depletion by an increase in quiescence that makes old NSCs more resistant to regenerate the injured brain. Once activated, however, young and old NSCs show similar proliferation and differentiation capacity. Single-cell transcriptomics of NSCs indicate that aging changes NSCs minimally. In the aging brain, niche-derived inflammatory signals and the Wnt antagonist sFRP5 induce…
Prediction of Chromatin Accessibility in Gene-Regulatory Regions from Transcriptomics Data
AbstractThe epigenetics landscape of cells plays a key role in the establishment of cell-type specific gene expression programs characteristic of different cellular phenotypes. Different experimental procedures have been developed to obtain insights into the accessible chromatin landscape including DNase-seq, FAIRE-seq and ATAC-seq. However, current downstream computational tools fail to reliably determine regulatory region accessibility from the analysis of these experimental data. In particular, currently available peak calling algorithms are very sensitive to their parameter settings and show highly heterogeneous results, which hampers a trustworthy identification of accessible chromatin…
Prox1 Is Required for Oligodendrocyte Cell Identity in Adult Neural Stem Cells of the Subventricular Zone
Abstract Adult neural stem cells with the ability to generate neurons and glia cells are active throughout life in both the dentate gyrus (DG) and the subventricular zone (SVZ). Differentiation of adult neural stem cells is induced by cell fate determinants like the transcription factor Prox1. Evidence has been provided for a function of Prox1 as an inducer of neuronal differentiation within the DG. We now show that within the SVZ Prox1 induces differentiation into oligodendrocytes. Moreover, we find that loss of Prox1 expression in vivo reduces cell migration into the corpus callosum, where the few Prox1 deficient SVZ-derived remaining cells fail to differentiate into oligodendrocytes. Thu…