Cai Qing, Li Yuanyuan, Mao Jianxin, Pei Gang
State Key Laboratory of Cell Biology, Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of SciencesShanghai, China; Graduate School, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of SciencesShanghai, China.
State Key Laboratory of Cell Biology, Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of SciencesShanghai, China; School of Life Science and Technology, and the Collaborative Innovation Center for Brain Science, Tongji UniversityShanghai, China.
Front Cell Neurosci. 2016 Dec 9;10:280. doi: 10.3389/fncel.2016.00280. eCollection 2016.
α-Asarone is an active constituent of , one of the widely used traditional Chinese Medicine to treat cognitive defect, and recently is shown to promote neurogenesis. Here, we demonstrated that low level (3 μM) of α-asarone attenuated LPS-induced BV2 cell bipolar elongated morphological change, with no significant effect on the LPS-induced pro-inflammatory cytokine expressions. In addition, time-lapse analysis also revealed that α-asarone modulated LPS-induced BV2 morphological dynamics. Consistently a significant reduction in the LPS-induced Monocyte Chemoattractant Protein (MCP-1) mRNA and protein levels was also detected along with the morphological change. Mechanistic study showed that the attenuation effect to the LPS-resulted morphological modulation was also detected in the presence of MCP-1 antibodies or a CCR antagonist. This result has also been confirmed in primary cultured microglia. The investigation provided further evidence that α-asarone reduced the proportion of activated microglia, and reduced microglial tip number and maintained the velocity. Our study thus reveals α-asarone effectively modulates microglial morphological dynamics, and implies this effect of α-asarone may functionally relate to its influence on neurogenesis.
α-细辛醚是一种广泛用于治疗认知缺陷的传统中药的活性成分，最近有研究表明它能促进神经发生。在此，我们证明低浓度（3μM）的α-细辛醚可减轻脂多糖（LPS）诱导的BV2细胞双极伸长形态变化，对LPS诱导的促炎细胞因子表达无显著影响。此外，延时分析还显示α-细辛醚可调节LPS诱导的BV2形态动力学。同样，随着形态变化，LPS诱导的单核细胞趋化蛋白-1（MCP-1）mRNA和蛋白水平也显著降低。机制研究表明，在存在MCP-1抗体或CCR拮抗剂的情况下，也能检测到对LPS导致的形态调节的减弱作用。这一结果在原代培养的小胶质细胞中也得到了证实。研究进一步证明α-细辛醚降低了活化小胶质细胞的比例，减少了小胶质细胞的突起数量并维持了其速度。我们的研究因此揭示了α-细辛醚能有效调节小胶质细胞的形态动力学，并暗示α-细辛醚的这种作用可能在功能上与其对神经发生的影响有关。
