Regenerative neurogenic response from glia requires insulin driven neuron-glia communication
Abstract
Understanding how injury to the Central Nervous System (CNS) induces de novo neurogenesis in animals would help promote regeneration in humans. Regenerative neurogenesis could originate from glia and glial Neuron-Glia antigen-2 (NG2) may sense injury-induced neuronal signals, but these are unknown. Here, we used Drosophila to search for genes functionally related the NG2 homologue kon-tiki (kon), and identified Islet Antigen-2 (Ia-2), required in neurons for insulin secretion. Alterations in Ia-2 function induced neural stem cell gene expression, injury increased ia-2 expression and induced ectopic neural stem cells. Using genetic analysis and lineage tracing, we demonstrate that Ia-2 and Kon regulate Drosophila insulin-like peptide 6 (Dilp-6), to induce glial proliferation and neural stem cells from glia. Ectopic neural stem cells can divide, and limited de novo neurogenesis could be traced back to glial cells. Altogether, Ia-2 and Dilp-6 drive a neuron-glia relay that restores glia, and reprograms glia into neural stem cells for regeneration.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.
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Single cell transcriptome atlas of the Drosophila larval brainNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE134722.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/L008343/1)
- Neale J Harrison
- Marta Moreira
- Alicia Hidalgo
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/R00871X/1)
- Marta Moreira
- Alicia Hidalgo
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (MIBTP Studentship)
- Elizabeth Connolly
Marie Curie International Incoming Post-Doctoral Fellowship (TOLKEDA)
- Jun Sun
- Alicia Hidalgo
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2021, Harrison et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Further reading
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- Developmental Biology
- Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine
Niches are often found in specific positions in tissues relative to the stem cells they support. Consistency of niche position suggests that placement is important for niche function. However, the complexity of most niches has precluded a thorough understanding of how their proper placement is established. To address this, we investigated the formation of a genetically tractable niche, the Drosophila Posterior Signaling Center (PSC), the assembly of which had not been previously explored. This niche controls hematopoietic progenitors of the lymph gland (LG). PSC cells were previously shown to be specified laterally in the embryo, but ultimately reside dorsally, at the LG posterior. Here, using live-imaging, we show that PSC cells migrate as a tight collective and associate with multiple tissues during their trajectory to the LG posterior. We find that Slit emanating from two extrinsic sources, visceral mesoderm and cardioblasts, is required for the PSC to remain a collective, and for its attachment to cardioblasts during migration. Without proper Slit-Robo signaling, PSC cells disperse, form aberrant contacts, and ultimately fail to reach their stereotypical position near progenitors. Our work characterizes a novel example of niche formation and identifies an extrinsic signaling relay that controls precise niche positioning.
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- Computational and Systems Biology
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