Identification and origin of neuronal precursors in the adult mouse hippocampus

现在很清楚，在正常条件下，成年哺乳动物大脑中至少有两个区域继续产生新的神经元：嗅球（嗅觉中心）和海马体（负责记忆和学习的器官）。这些新的神经元取代了那些因衰老而失去的神经元，因此对正常的大脑功能至关重要。最近，这些结果已经扩展到表明，各种损伤，如中风，可以导致成年大脑中前体细胞的增殖，最终导致新的神经细胞的增加，这些细胞继续修复病理损伤。虽然在正常条件下和损伤后产生新的神经细胞是非常重要的，但令人惊讶的是，我们仍然对产生这些细胞的前体群体的性质知之甚少，对它们的调节更是知之甚少。在很大程度上，这是由于我们无法识别和分离脑干细胞。因此，在过去的5年里，我采用了细胞分选技术-通常用于分离血细胞，以从成年小鼠的大脑中分离细胞群。由于我的工作，我们现在能够对一群干细胞进行分类，这些干细胞已知会在成人嗅球中产生新的脑细胞。这项工作将扩展到识别和识别海马体中的前体群体。因此，海马前体群的鉴定将为开发治疗中风等疾病的新方法提供基础

It is now clear that new neurons continue to be generated under normal conditions in at least 2 regions of the adult mammalian brain: the olfactory bulb (smell centre) and the hippocampus (organ responsible for memory and learning). These new neurons replace those lost as part of aging and, as such, are vital to normal brain function. Recently, these results have been extended to show that various insults, such as stroke, can cause the proliferation of precursor cells in the adult brain, which ultimately results in the addition of new nerve cells that go on to repair the pathological damage. Although the production of new nerve cells under normal conditions and following damage is highly significant, we still know surprisingly little about the nature of the precursor population which produces these cells and even less about their regulation. For the most part, this has been due to our inability to identify and isolate the brain stem cell. Thus, over the last 5 years I have adapted cell sorting techniques - which are normally used to separate blood cells to isolate populations of cells from the brains of adult mice. As a result of my work, we are now in the position to sort for a population of stem cells that are known to give rise to new brain cells in the adult olfactory bulb. This work will be extended to identify and characterise the precursor population that resides in the hippocampus. The identification of this hippocampal precursor population will thus provide the foundation for developing new approaches for the treatment of diseases such as stroke