Effect of central myelin on the proliferation and differentiation into O4(+) oligodendrocytes of GFP-NSCs.

Myelin is a biologically active mutilamellar that is formed by oligodendrocytes (OLs) in the central nervous system (CNS) and ensheathes axons (Ishii et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106:14605-14610, 2009). Myelin damage is related to neurological trauma such as spinal cord injury (SCI). In this article, we investigated whether myelin derived from rat spinal cord can influence the proliferation of neural stem cells (NSCs) and NSCs differentiation into oligodendrocytes in vitro. After extracting myelin, we verified that myelin preparation was successful by western blot analysis. Then, we explored the effects of different myelin concentrations on the NSCs proliferation by MTT assays. Our results showed that 2 μg/ml myelin can promote the proliferation of NSCs, while NgR antibody can antagonize the effect. In addition, myelin can inhibit the differentiation of NSCs into O4(+) oligodendrocytes impeding them maturation. In conclusion, these results suggested that central myelin can affect the proliferation and differentiation of NSCs, thus promoting us to understand further the complex roles of myelin in NSCs after CNS injury.