Research article

Identification of regeneration-associated genes after central and peripheral nerve injury in the adult rat

Andreas B Schmitt¹ , Sebastian Breuer¹ , Jan Liman¹ , Armin Buss¹ , Christiane Schlangen¹ , Katrin Pech¹ , Elly M Hol² , Gary A Brook¹ , Johannes Noth¹ and Franz-Werner Schwaiger³

¹Department of Neurology, Aachen University Medical School, Pauwelsstrasse 30, 52057 Aachen, Germany

²Netherlands Institute for Brain Research, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands

³Department of Neuromorphology, Max-Planck-Institute of Neurobiology, 82152 Martinsried, Germany

author email corresponding author email

BMC Neuroscience 2003, 4:8doi:10.1186/1471-2202-4-8

Published:	19 May 2003

Abstract

Background

It is well known that neurons of the peripheral nervous system have the capacity to regenerate a severed axon leading to functional recovery, whereas neurons of the central nervous system do not regenerate successfully after injury. The underlying molecular programs initiated by axotomized peripheral and central nervous system neurons are not yet fully understood.

Results

To gain insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying the process of regeneration in the nervous system, differential display polymerase chain reaction has been used to identify differentially expressed genes following axotomy of peripheral and central nerve fibers. For this purpose, axotomy induced changes of regenerating facial nucleus neurons, and non-regenerating red nucleus and Clarke's nucleus neurons have been analyzed in an intra-animal side-to-side comparison. One hundred and thirty five gene fragments have been isolated, of which 69 correspond to known genes encoding for a number of different functional classes of proteins such as transcription factors, signaling molecules, homeobox-genes, receptors and proteins involved in metabolism. Sixty gene fragments correspond to genomic mouse sequences without known function. In situ-hybridization has been used to confirm differential expression and to analyze the cellular localization of these gene fragments. Twenty one genes (~15%) have been demonstrated to be differentially expressed.

Conclusions

The detailed analysis of differentially expressed genes in different lesion paradigms provides new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying the process of regeneration and may lead to the identification of genes which play key roles in functional repair of central nervous tissues.