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Central Nervous System and Dedifferentiation

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Cellular Dedifferentiation and Regenerative Medicine

Abstract

Central nervous system serves as the leading organ controlling, manipulating, and involving into almost every aspects of human body’s functions. Researches and neuroscientists have been trying to find out varieties of approaches to repair and restore the damaged or degenerated central nervous system. It is generally believed that there are hundreds of billions of neurons in our brain, and the quantity would not change after birth. The olfactory bulb and hippocampus are the only two regions that could undergo self-renewal during our lifetime. Neural stem cells could differentiate into neuronal restricted progenitors and glial restricted progenitors. Glial restricted progenitors could produce type I astrocytes, type II astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes. But the regenerative capacity of these stem cells is far insufficient. Dedifferentiation of certain types of cells that resided in the central nervous system has provided the opportunity for neural regeneration, since other approaches, such as transplantation or drugs, could hardly take effects. Specifically, astrocyte dedifferentiation was observed successfully both in vivo and vitro. Injury triggers the dedifferentiation in vivo, while astrocytes could be reprogrammed to dedifferentiated types in vitro. This review summarized the current understandings and researches on central nervous regeneration, astrocyte differentiation, and direct reprogramming of astrocytes. In order to achieve the goal of CNS regeneration, clarifying the molecular mechanisms of regulating dedifferentiation and redifferentiation in situ would lay the solid foundation for further researches.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Wound Repair and Regeneration of PLA, The First Hospital Affiliated to the PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China

    Xiaobing Fu

  2. Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China

    Andong Zhao

  3. School of Medicine, Nankai University, Tianjin, China

    Tian Hu

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  1. Xiaobing Fu
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  2. Andong Zhao
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  3. Tian Hu
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Fu, X., Zhao, A., Hu, T. (2018). Central Nervous System and Dedifferentiation. In: Cellular Dedifferentiation and Regenerative Medicine. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-56179-9_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-56179-9_1

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