日本研究人员日前在成熟大白鼠的大脑新皮质中发现了新的神经祖细胞，并确认这些祖细胞生成了新的神经细胞。
成年人大脑组织再生困难是当今医学的一道难题，许多因事故或疾病造成的脑损伤患者一生无法摆脱后遗症。
日本科学技术振兴机构和藤田保健卫生大学发表联合新闻公报说，日本研究人员用成年大白鼠进行实验，通过观察细胞分裂标记在实验鼠整个脑组织的分布情况，在大脑新皮质最外面的第一层发现了一些神经祖细胞。研究人员压迫大白鼠的颈动脉，令流向大脑的血流暂时减少，结果这些神经祖细胞增殖到原先的约1．5倍，并且生成了新的细胞。通过对新生细胞形状等进行分析，研究人员确认这些细胞都是神经细胞。
研究人员说，这一发现表明，大脑新皮质可再生新神经细胞。
这项新成果已发表在《自然·神经科学》杂志网络版上。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
Nature Neuroscience 27 December 2009 | doi:10.1038/nn.2473
Ischemia-induced neurogenesis of neocortical layer 1 progenitor cells
Koji Ohira1,2,3,4, Takahiro Furuta2, Hiroyuki Hioki2, Kouichi C Nakamura2,4,8, Eriko Kuramoto2, Yasuyo Tanaka2, Nobuo Funatsu3, Keiko Shimizu5, Takao Oishi5, Motoharu Hayashi5, Tsuyoshi Miyakawa1,4,6, Takeshi Kaneko2,4 & Shun Nakamura3,4,7
Adult mammalian neurogenesis occurs in the hippocampus and the olfactory bulb, whereas neocortical adult neurogenesis remains controversial. Several occurrences of neocortical adult neurogenesis in injured neocortex were recently reported, suggesting that neural stem cells (NSCs) or neuronal progenitor cells (NPCs) that can be activated by injury are maintained in the adult brain. However, it is not clear whether or where neocortical NSCs/NPCs exist in the brain. We found NPCs in the neocortical layer 1 of adult rats and observed that their proliferation was highly activated by global forebrain ischemia. Using retrovirus-mediated labeling of layer 1 proliferating cells with membrane-targeted green fluorescent protein, we found that the newly generated neurons were GABAergic and that the neurons were functionally integrated into the neuronal circuitry. Our results suggest that layer 1 NPCs are a source of adult neurogenesis under ischemic conditions.
1 Division of Systems Medical Science, Institute for Comprehensive Medical Science, Fujita Health University, Toyoake, Aichi, Japan.
2 Department of Morphological Brain Science, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
3 Department of Biochemistry and Cellular Biology, National Institute of Neuroscience, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Tokyo, Japan.
4 Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST), Kawaguchi, Saitama, Japan.
5 Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology, Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Inuyama, Aichi, Japan.
6 Center for Genetic Analysis of Behavior, National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Myodaiji, Okazaki, Aichi, Japan.
7 Department of Biotechnology and Life Science, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Koganei, Tokyo, Japan.
8 Present address: Medical Research Council Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, and Human Frontier Science Program, Strasbourg Cedex, France.
