The Long Evans shaker (les) rat is a recently identified CNS myelin mutant with an autosomal recessive mode of inheritance. Although scattered myelin sheaths are present in some areas of the CNS, most notably the ventral spinal cord in the young neonatal rat, this myelin is gradually lost, and 8-12 weeks little myelin is present throughout the CNS. Despite this severe myelin deficiency, some mu...

In the central nervous system, lipid-protein interactions are pivotal for myelin maintenance, as these interactions regulate protein transport to the myelin membrane as well as the molecular organization within the sheath. To improve our understanding of the fundamental properties of myelin, we focused here on the lateral membrane organization and dynamics of peripheral membrane protein 18.5-kD...

Oligodendrocytes, the myelin-forming cells of the central nervous system, were cultured from newborn rat brain and optic nerve to allow us to analyze whether two transmembranous myelin proteins, myelin-associated glycoprotein (MAG) and proteolipid protein (PLP), were expressed together with myelin basic protein (MBP) in defined medium with low serum and in the absence of neurons. Using double l...

Background: Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs) elicit neuroprotective effects, and their repair ability has been investigated in different experimental models. We aimed to investigate the effect of multiple i.p. BM-MSCs injections in the cuprizone model of multiple sclerosis in mice. Methods: Adult male C57BL/6 mice (n = 40) were fed a regular diet or a diet containing cuprizone (0.2%...

Sphingolipids containing 2-hydroxylated fatty acids are among the most abundant lipid components of the myelin sheath and therefore are thought to play an important role in formation and function of myelin. To prove this hypothesis, we generated mice lacking a functional fatty acid 2-hydroxylase (FA2H) gene. FA2H-deficient (FA2H(-/-)) mice lacked 2-hydroxylated sphingolipids in the brain and in...

Two putative human oligodendroglioma cell lines were examined for the expression of the oligodendrocyte-associated genes, 2',3'-cyclic nucleotide-3'-phosphodiesterase, myelin basic protein, myelin proteolipid proteins, and myelin-associated glycoprotein. The expression of these genes also was examined in control astrocytoma and neuroblastoma cell lines. In addition, the expression of the non-ol...

The fact that central nerve tissue is encephalitogenic has been known since the observation of a post-injection reaction of some rabies victims to the Pasteur vaccine that contained nerve tissue (Brostoff, 1977). Subsequently the encephalitogenic agent in central nerve tissue was traced to a component of the myelin sheath, and a protein was finally isolated that in the presence of complete Freu...

The presence of a protein kinase capable of phosphorylating endogenous as well as exogenously added myelin basic proteins has been demonstrated in a myelin-like membrane fraction isolated from reaggregating and surface adhering, primary cultures of cells dissociated from embryonic mouse brain. Only the large and small components of myelin basic proteins were found to be phosphorylated when myel...