Abstract

Neural stem cells (NSCs) are multipotent and correct fate determination is crucial to guarantee brain formation and homeostasis. How NSCs are instructed to generate neuronal or glial progeny is not well understood. Here we addressed how murine adult hippocampal NSC fate is regulated and describe how Scaffold Attachment Factor B (SAFB) blocks oligodendrocyte production to enable neuron generation. We found that SAFB prevents NSC expression of the transcription factor Nuclear Factor I/B (NFIB) by binding to sequences in the Nfib mRNA and enhancing Drosha-dependent cleavage of the transcripts. We show that increasing SAFB expression prevents oligodendrocyte production by multipotent adult NSCs, and conditional deletion of Safb increases NFIB expression and oligodendrocyte formation in the adult hippocampus. Our results provide novel insights into a mechanism that controls Drosha functions for selective regulation of NSC fate by modulating the post-transcriptional destabilization of Nfib mRNA in a lineage-specific manner.

Data availability

Proteomics mass spectrometry data have been deposited in PRIDE:Project accession: PXD017677Project DOI: 10.6019/PXD017677

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Pascal Forcella

    Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Niklas Ifflander

    Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Chiara Rolando

    Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Elli-Anna Balta

    Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Aikaterini Lampada

    Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Claudio Giachino

    Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Tanzila Mukhtar

    Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Thomas Bock

    Proteomics Core Facility, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-9314-5318
  9. Verdon Taylor

    Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
    For correspondence
    verdon.taylor@unibas.ch
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3497-5976

Funding

Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (31003A_162609)

  • Verdon Taylor

Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (31003A_182388)

  • Verdon Taylor

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: According to Swiss Federal and Swiss Veterinary office regulations, all mice were bred and kept in a specific pathogen-free animal facility with 12 hours day-night cycle and free access to clean food and water. All mice were healthy and immunocompetent. All procedures were approved by the Basel Cantonal Veterinary Office under license number 2537 (Ethics commission Basel-Stadt, Basel Switzerland).

Copyright

© 2024, Forcella 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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  1. Pascal Forcella
  2. Niklas Ifflander
  3. Chiara Rolando
  4. Elli-Anna Balta
  5. Aikaterini Lampada
  6. Claudio Giachino
  7. Tanzila Mukhtar
  8. Thomas Bock
  9. Verdon Taylor
(2024)
SAFB regulates hippocampal stem cell fate by targeting Drosha to destabilize Nfib mRNA
eLife 13:e74940.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74940

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74940

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