Seminar

Damage repair in the brain: lessons from Drosophila

Torsten Bossing, PhD

The mechanisms of damage repair in the central nervous system are a fundamental biological issue and have important medical implications. We show that at the ventral midline in Drosophila embryos, ablation of one sibling cell causes a division of the surviving sibling and replacement of the ablated cell. Transcriptional changes in single surviving cells uncover jun as the most upregulated transcript. In Jun mutants most surviving cells no longer divide. dMiro, a stabiliser of microtubules, is the highest downregulated transcript. Ectopic expression of dMiro can prevent divisions after ablation. Conversely, depolymerisation of microtubules and tubulin expression allow midline cells to enter into mitosis. The ependymal nature of the ventral midline and the conservation of the identified transcripts suggest similar mechanisms may exist in the vertebrate CNS.