The Roles Of Nicx6.1in Astrocytes Development

The central nervous system (CNS) is mainly composed of neurons, oligodendrocytes and astrocytes. Due to having a number of more than80%of the total number of cells in the CNS of mice, astrocytes contribute to the most abundant cell type in the CNS and play a variety of functional roles, such as providing nutrition for neurons, regulating ion balance and neurotransmitter metabolism, forming the blood brain barrier, helping synapses formation and maintaining their functions, inducing neurogenesis in the adult brain. Mounting evidences have shown that functional changes of astrocytes play critical roles in the nervous system diseases including Alzheimer’s disease, neuropathic pain, inflammatory demyelination disease, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, brain and spinal cord mechanical injury and so on. Though astrocytes play an important role in the CNS, the molecular mechanisms about their development are poorly understood. Previous studies have shown that the transcription factor Nkx6.1may be involved in regulating the cell fate specification of spinal cord astrocytes. To define the roles of Nkx6.1in astrocyte development, we have investigated the expression of the astrocyte-specific genes in different stages in Nkx6.1-/-mutant mice. The results suggested that the absence of Nkx6.1function did not affect the initial expression of the astrocyte progenitor genes, but the subsequent differentiation and maturation of astrocytes were delayed, and the cell fates of Slitl+/Reelin+vA2astrocytes were affected with eliminated expression of Slitl. Together, our studies indicated that Nkx6.1played important roles in the fate specification and differentiation of astrocytes in the development spinal cords.