Patchy myelination pattern in the jimpy mouse brain: immunohistochemical study.

The jimpy (jp) mutation of the mouse leads to a dramatic decrease of myelination in the hemizygous mutant central nervous system (CNS). Several descriptions based on classical histology, immunohistochemistry, and electron microscopy (EM) have demonstrated the scarcity of myelin formation in the different parts of the CNS. The immunohistochemical study presented here showed a very singular patchy pattern of myelin distribution in the different areas of the whole mutant brain. The myelin patches are randomly dispersed without bilateral symmetry, and their density and location vary from one animal to another. No reproducible pattern of myelination could be found among the population observed. This distribution has been compared with observations on young heterozygotes and wild-type homozygotes from the same strain. A similar patchy and random distribution of myelin could be observed in heterozygotes, which present an intermediate level of myelination. This strongly suggests that a migration of precursors or immature oligodendrocytes (ODCs) from the periventricular zone followed by local multiplication of colonies of ODCs before myelination is a general feature in normal as well as pathological conditions.