Nature Discovery: Adult brain damage, will "go back to the furnace"

Repairing brain and spinal cord injuries may be one of the most challenging challenges in medicine.until recently, this seemed to be an impossible task.in a new study published in nature on April 16, Beijing time, the research team led by the University of California, San Diego found that when adult brain cells are damaged, they will return to the embryonic state: in the immature state, these cells can regenerate new connections to help restore the lost function under appropriate conditions.Research Associate author, Professor of neuroscience, University of California, San Diego School of medicine, and director of the Institute of translational neuroscience "Using incredible tools such as modern neuroscience, molecular genetics, virology and computing, we have for the first time determined how all the genes in an adult brain cell reset themselves to regenerate," tuszynski said.this gives us a fundamental understanding of how regeneration occurs at the transcriptional level."using a mouse model, tuszynski and his team found that mature neurons in the adult brain return to embryonic state after injury.Image Source: naturetuszynski said, "who would have thought that was so? Just 20 years ago, we thought that the adult brain was static, terminally differentiated, completely established and unchanging."but previous studies by Fred gage, director of the Salk Institute for biology and adjunct professor at the University of California, San Diego, and others, have found that new brain cells are constantly produced in the hippocampus and subventricular areas and replenish these areas throughout life.tuszynski said: "our work further refines this concept.the ability of the brain to repair or replace itself is not limited to these two regions.on the contrary, when an adult cortical cell is damaged, it returns to the embryonic cortical neuron at the transcriptional level.in this far immature state, if a growth environment is provided, it can regenerate axons.in my opinion, this is the most shocking feature of this study."to provide an encouraging environment for regeneration, the team studied the response of damaged neurons after spinal cord injury.in recent years, researchers have significantly improved the possibility of using neural stem cells to stimulate the repair of spinal cord injury and recovery of loss of function, mainly by inducing neurons to extend axons at the injured site and reconnect the severed nerves.for example, last year, tuszynski participated in a multidisciplinary team that described the use of 3D printing implants to promote nerve cell growth, restore connectivity and loss of function in rats with spinal cord injury.this latest study produced a second surprising result: in promoting nerve growth and repair, an important genetic pathway involves the Huntington gene (HTT), which when mutated causes Huntington's disease, also known as Huntington's disease. is a slow onset neurodegenerative disease, with a incidence rate of about 1/10000 in the population. It is characterized by the gradual collapse of neural cells in the brain. tuszynski's team found that the "regenerative transcriptome", the collection of messenger RNA molecules used by corticospinal neurons, is maintained by htt genes. in htt deficient mice, axonal sprouting and regeneration were significantly reduced after spinal cord injury. Image Source: naturetuszynski said: "although there have been many studies trying to understand why Huntington gene mutation causes disease, we know little about the normal function of the gene. this new study shows that Huntington gene is essential for promoting the repair of brain neurons. therefore, the mutation of this gene will lead to the loss of self-healing function of adult neurons. this in turn may lead to chronic neuronal degeneration, which may lead to Huntington's disease. "reference