Seminars are open to all visitors and start Monday at 16:00 sharp. Coffee and tea will be served from 15:45. The seminar series lectures are in a colloquiumzaal at the third floor (entrance level) of the Faculty building of Erasmus MC.
Frank Kirchhoff
Max Planck Inst., Martinsried, DE
Neuron-glia interactions – imaging dynamics of the central nervous system
| 2009-03-02 | Room: Ae 406 |
Acute CNS injuries induce fast neuronal and glial cell damage. Secondary injury processes involve activation of different cell types like astroglia, oligodendrocytes and microglial cells. A complex and yet not understood sequence of cellular responses initiate functional recovery after the neurodegeneration process. We have generated two types of transgenic mouse models which enable us (1) to visualize and follow cellular reactions during de-and regeneration and (2) to perform fate mapping of injury-activated glial cells. To visualize axons and glial cells in the dorsal columns of the lumbar spinal cord, we used triple-transgenic mice (TgN(Thy1-EYFP)xTgN(GFAP-ECFP)xTgH(CX3CR1-EGFP)) in which axons, astrocytes and microglial cells are labelled by yellow, cyan and green fluorescent proteins, respectively. The same mice were imaged before and after lesioning at the day of injury and at subsequent days for up to three months. The combination of multi-cellular labeling with multiple-time-point imaging allowed for the first time to explore unambiguously the spatio-temporal relationship between the cellular responses in spinal cord injury. To study the differentiation fate of activated glial cells, we generated transgenic mice with functional complementation of split Cre DNA fragments as detectors of coincident gene activities observed after injury. In these mice N- and C-terminal Cre fragments (NCre and CCre) are targeted by the GFAP and PLP promoter. We could demonstrate that after acute brain trauma oligodendrocyte lineage cells can differentiate into protoplasmic astrocytes. Combination of transgenesis and in vivo imaging is a powerful approach to study brain function in health and disease.