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. 2015 Dec 16:4:e12523.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.12523.

Hold your breath!

Katharina Lust  1 , Joachim Wittbrodt  1
Affiliations

Hold your breath!

Katharina Lust et al. Elife. .

Abstract

Reactive oxygen species produced in response to changes in the level of oxygen in water can promote the regeneration of brain tissue in newts.

Keywords: cell biology; developmental biology; neural stem cells; neurogenesis; newt; reactive oxygen species; regeneration; stem cells.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. The reactive oxygen species (ROS) that are produced after damage to neurons are necessary for regeneration of the newt brain.
Exposure to hypoxia followed by re-oxygenation, or deliberate chemical damage (ablation), leads to the loss of neurons (orange) in red spotted newts, and also causes immune cells called microglia (grey) to proliferate. In ependymoglia stem cells (green), ROS are produced inside mitochondria and by NOX proteins at the cell membrane. Only NOX-derived ROS, which can be inhibited by the drug apocynin (bold red lines), are necessary for the proliferation of ependymoglia stem cells and the subsequent regeneration of lost neurons. Inhibiting the microglia with a drug called Dexamethasone (thin red lines) has no effect on the proliferation of the ependymoglia stem cells, which suggests that inflammation does not influence the regeneration of neurons. Bold black lines represent processes that are necessary for regeneration; the processes represented by thin black lines are not necessary for regeneration.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

  • doi: 10.7554/eLife.08422

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