| Adult mammals lack the ability to regenerate their central nervous system (CNS) after injury. However, lower vertebrates such as fish and some urodele amphibians, can regenerate their CNS throughout life. The anuran frog, Xenopus laevis, is capable of regenerating its spinal cord as a tadpole but loses the ability to do so as an adult. For my thesis, I proposed to examine the cell and molecular factors that play a role in transforming the regeneration permissive CNS of the tadpole into one that inhibits spinal cord regeneration after metamorphosis.Chapter 1 reviews the gross organization of the CNS and the work that has been done in the field of spinal cord regeneration and repair. Chapter 2 presents the current understanding of spinal cord regeneration and its relationship to metamorphosis in Xenopus laevis. It also discusses the work that I completed for my Master's thesis, which served as the foundation of my doctoral research. Chapter 3 details my efforts to use laser capture microdissection to isolate regenerating neurons for gene expression analysis. Chapter 4 is the research that I completed to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of spinal cord regeneration in the Xenopus laevis tadpole. Lastly, Chapter 5 presents conclusions draw from this work and its impact on the field of nervous system regeneration. |
