The Glial Regenerative Response to Central Nervous System Injury Is Enabled by Pros-Notch and Pros-NFκB Feedback

Organisms are structurally robust, as cells accommodate changes preserving structural integrity and function. The molecular mechanisms underlying structural robustness and plasticity are poorly understood, but can be investigated by probing how cells respond to injury. Injury to the CNS induces proliferation of enwrapping glia, leading to axonal re-enwrapment and partial functional recovery. This glial regenerative response is found across species, and may reflect a common underlying genetic mechanism. Here, we show that injury to the Drosophila larval CNS induces glial proliferation, and we uncover a gene network controlling this response. It consists of the mutual maintenance between the cell cycle inhibitor Prospero (Pros) and the cell cycle activators Notch and NFκB. Together they maintain glia in the brink of dividing, they enable glial proliferation following injury, and subsequently they exert negative feedback on cell division restoring cell cycle arrest. Pros also promotes glial differentiation, resolving vacuolization, enabling debris clearance and axonal enwrapment. Disruption of this gene network prevents repair and induces tumourigenesis. Using wound area measurements across genotypes and time-lapse recordings we show that when glial proliferation and glial differentiation are abolished, both the size of the glial wound and neuropile vacuolization increase. When glial proliferation and differentiation are enabled, glial wound size decreases and injury-induced apoptosis and vacuolization are prevented. The uncovered gene network promotes regeneration of the glial lesion and neuropile repair. In the unharmed animal, it is most likely a homeostatic mechanism for structural robustness. This gene network may be of relevance to mammalian glia to promote repair upon CNS injury or disease

Selective Remodeling: Refining Neural Connectivity at the Neuromuscular Junction

A primer on new research by Fuentes-Medel and colleagues explains the important role of non-neural cells in clearing neural debris, which is continuously produced during the normal remodeling processes that establish and maintain neural connectivity

Re-evaluation of learned information in Drosophila

Animals constantly assess the reliability of learned information to optimize their behaviour. On retrieval, consolidated long-term memory can be neutralized by extinction if the learned prediction was inaccurate. Alternatively, retrieved memory can be maintained, following a period of reconsolidation during which it is labile. Although extinction and reconsolidation provide opportunities to alleviate problematic human memories, we lack a detailed mechanistic understanding of memory updating. Here we identify neural operations underpinning the re-evaluation of memory in Drosophila. Reactivation of reward-reinforced olfactory memory can lead to either extinction or reconsolidation, depending on prediction accuracy. Each process recruits activity in specific parts of the mushroom body output network and distinct subsets of reinforcing dopaminergic neurons. Memory extinction requires output neurons with dendrites in the α and α' lobes of the mushroom body, which drive negatively reinforcing dopaminergic neurons that innervate neighbouring zones. The aversive valence of these new extinction memories neutralizes previously learned odour preference. Memory reconsolidation requires the γ2α'1 mushroom body output neurons. This pathway recruits negatively reinforcing dopaminergic neurons innervating the same compartment and re-engages positively reinforcing dopaminergic neurons to reconsolidate the original reward memory. These data establish that recurrent and hierarchical connectivity between mushroom body output neurons and dopaminergic neurons enables memory re-evaluation driven by reward-prediction error

Draper-dependent glial phagocytic activity is mediated by Src and Syk family kinase signalling

The cellular machinery promoting phagocytosis of corpses of apoptotic cells is well conserved from worms to mammals. An important component is the Caenorhabditis elegans engulfment receptor CED-1 (ref. 1) and its Drosophila orthologue, Draper. The CED-1/Draper signalling pathway is also essential for the phagocytosis of other types of \u27modified self\u27 including necrotic cells, developmentally pruned axons and dendrites, and axons undergoing Wallerian degeneration. Here we show that Drosophila Shark, a non-receptor tyrosine kinase similar to mammalian Syk and Zap-70, binds Draper through an immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif (ITAM) in the Draper intracellular domain. We show that Shark activity is essential for Draper-mediated signalling events in vivo, including the recruitment of glial membranes to severed axons and the phagocytosis of axonal debris and neuronal cell corpses by glia. We also show that the Src family kinase (SFK) Src42A can markedly increase Draper phosphorylation and is essential for glial phagocytic activity. We propose that ligand-dependent Draper receptor activation initiates the Src42A-dependent tyrosine phosphorylation of Draper, the association of Shark and the activation of the Draper pathway. These Draper-Src42A-Shark interactions are strikingly similar to mammalian immunoreceptor-SFK-Syk signalling events in mammalian myeloid and lymphoid cells. Thus, Draper seems to be an ancient immunoreceptor with an extracellular domain tuned to modified self, and an intracellular domain promoting phagocytosis through an ITAM-domain-SFK-Syk-mediated signalling cascade