Department of Anatomy, Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science & Technology, Wuhan, PR China.
Cell Mol Biol Lett. 2010 Dec;15(4):582-99. doi: 10.2478/s11658-010-0029-x. Epub 2010 Aug 14.
The glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) is an astrocyte-specific member of the class III intermediate filament proteins. It is generally used as a specific marker of astrocytes in the central nervous system (CNS). We isolated a GFAP cDNA from the brain and spinal cord cDNA library of Gekko japonicus, and prepared polyclonal antibodies against gecko GFAP to provide useful tools for further immunochemistry studies. Both the real-time quantitative PCR and western blot results revealed that the expression of GFAP in the spinal cord after transection increased, reaching its maximum level after 3 days, and then gradually decreased over the rest of the 2 weeks of the experiment. Immunohistochemical analyses demonstrated that the increase in GFAP-positive labeling was restricted to the white matter rather than the gray matter. In particular, a slight increase in the number of GFAP positive star-shaped astrocytes was detected in the ventral and lateral regions of the white matter. Our results indicate that reactive astrogliosis in the gecko spinal cord took place primarily in the white matter during a short time interval, suggesting that the specific astrogliosis evaluated by GFAP expression might be advantageous in spinal cord regeneration.
胶质纤维酸性蛋白（GFAP）是 III 类中间丝蛋白家族中一种星形胶质细胞特异性成员。它通常被用作中枢神经系统（CNS）中星形胶质细胞的特异性标志物。我们从壁虎脑和脊髓 cDNA 文库中分离出 GFAP cDNA，并制备了针对壁虎 GFAP 的多克隆抗体，为进一步的免疫化学研究提供了有用的工具。实时定量 PCR 和 Western blot 结果均显示，脊髓横断后 GFAP 在脊髓中的表达增加，在第 3 天达到最高水平，然后在实验的其余 2 周内逐渐下降。免疫组织化学分析表明，GFAP 阳性标记物的增加仅限于白质，而不是灰质。特别是在白质的腹侧和外侧区域，检测到 GFAP 阳性星形胶质细胞的数量略有增加。我们的结果表明，壁虎脊髓中的反应性星形胶质增生主要发生在短时间内的白质中，这表明通过 GFAP 表达评估的特定星形胶质增生可能有利于脊髓再生。
