Shrayana Ghosh, Amity University Kolkata
The team at Johns Hopkins concentrated on eye support cells for the analysis. The cells known as the Müller Glia in zebrafish is known to repair and respond to the light-sensitive retina by developing new cells in the central nervous system. Besides the regrowth of eye tissue, the regenerative abilities of zebrafish are applied to other parts of the body, including fins, queues and some internal organs. For their experiments, the researchers induced retinal injuries in zebrafish, mice and chicken and used high-powered microscopes in amalgamation with a previously developed gene mapping. The tool that was used to observe the respond of the Müller glia.
The results showed the cells in all three species immediately entered an ‘active state’ which is marked by the activation of some specific genes that control inflammation. The active is what primarily helps to contain the injury and also send signals to the immune system for fighting against invaders or the repair the broken tissue. After the active state, the response of the specie however gets diverged. The active Müller glia in zebrafish begins to activate a network of transcription factors which in turn control the ‘on’ and ‘off’ of genes. The experiment done showed that the genes linked to cell maturity are activated by the NFI transcription factors, thus sending the Müller glia cells back to a more primitive developmental stage, allowing them to develop into different cell types to replaces the ones lost to injury.
The chicken with damaged retina in contract activates only some transcription factors turned on in zebrafish. Hence, the chickens are not capable enough to Crete new Müller glial genes. The mice on the other hand which has a very similar DNA to humans remained in the active stage at first, much longer than the zebrafish but never acquired the capability to make new neurons.
In mice, the nuclear factor I genes are turned on which actively blocks the Müller glia from generating the neurons and blacking the cells potential to regenerate thus proving that the same genes that allow the cells of the zebrafish to regenerate were available in the mice but the transcription factor was never activated.
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Source:
Thanh Hoang, Jie Wang, Patrick Boyd, Fang Wang, Clayton Santiago, Lizhi Jiang, Sooyeon Yoo, Manuela Lahne, Levi J. Todd, Meng Jia, Cristian Saez, Casey Keuthan, Isabella Palazzo, Natalie Squires, Warren A. Campbell, Fatemeh Rajaii, Trisha Parayil, Vickie Trinh, Dong Won Kim, Guohua Wang, Leah J. Campbell, John Ash, Andy J. Fischer, David R. Hyde, Jiang Qian, Seth Blackshaw. Gene regulatory networks controlling vertebrate retinal regeneration. Science, 2020; eabb8598 DOI: http://10.1126/science.abb8598
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