In the developing spinal cord, the majority of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs) are induced in the ventral neuroepithelium under the control of the Sonic Hedgehog (Shh) signaling pathway, whereas a small subset of OPCs are generated from the dorsal neuroepithelial cells independent of the Shh pathway. Although dorsally-derived OPCs (dOPCs) have been shown to participate in local axonal myelination in the dorsolateral regions during development, it is not known whether they are capable of migrating into the ventral region and myelinating ventral axons. In this study, we confirmed and extended the previous study on the developmental potential of dOPCs in the absence of ventrally-derived OPCs (vOPCs). In Nestin-Smo conditional knockout (cKO) mice, when ventral oligodendrogenesis was blocked, dOPCs were found to undergo rapid amplification, spread to ventral spinal tissue, and eventually differentiated into myelinating OLs in the ventral white matter with a temporal delay, providing genetic evidence that dOPCs are capable of myelinating ventral axons in the mouse spinal cord.

在发育中的脊髓中，大多数少突胶质祖细胞 (OPCs) 在 Sonic Hedgehog (Shh) 信号通路的控制下在腹侧神经上皮细胞中被诱导，而一小部分 OPCs 由背侧神经上皮细胞产生，独立于嘘路径。虽然背侧源性 OPCs (dOPCs) 已被证明在发育过程中参与背外侧区域的局部轴突髓鞘形成，但它们是否能够迁移到腹侧区域并为腹侧轴突形成髓鞘尚不清楚。在这项研究中，我们证实并扩展了先前关于在没有腹源 OPCs (vOPCs) 的情况下 dOPCs 的发育潜力的研究。在 Nestin-Smo 条件敲除 (cKO) 小鼠中，当腹侧少突胶质细胞生成被阻断时，发现 dOPCs 发生快速扩增，