An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

During the production process, the authors of this paper supplied revised versions of Figs. 2–5, Supplementary Tables 1–4, and Supplementary Videos 1–3, but because of publisher error, these revised items were not included in the final published version of the protocol. The figures have been updated in the PDF and HTML versions of the paper, and the revised Supplementary Information files are now available online. We note that the figures have been revised to improve their resolution only; the content of the figures and the data reflected remain unchanged. Also, print requirements impose some limits on figure resolution, but the authors have made very high-resolution versions of Figs. 2–5 available at as Source data.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Live-imaging technology has markedly advanced in the field of neural injury and axon degeneration; however, studies are still predominantly performed in in vitro settings such as cultured neuronal cells or in model organisms such as Caenorhabditis elegans in which axons lack glial wrappings. We recently developed a new in vivo model for adult-stage neural injury in Drosophila melanogaster, using the highly accessible wing of the animal. Because the Drosophila wing is translucent and dispensable for survival, it allows clear and direct visualization of injury-induced progressive responses of axons and glia highlighted by fluorescent protein (FP) markers in live animals over time. Moreover, unlike previous Drosophila models of neural injury, this procedure does not require dissection of the CNS. Thus, the key preparation steps for in vivo imaging of the neural injury response described in this protocol can be completed within 30 min.

Current methods for studying oligodendrocyte myelination using primary neurons are limited by the time, cost and reproducibility of myelination in vitro. Nanofibers with diameters of >0.4 μm fabricated from electrospinning of liquid polystyrene are suitable scaffolds for concentric membrane wrapping by oligodendrocytes. With the advent of aligned electrospinning technology, nanofibers can be rapidly fabricated, standardized, and configured into various densities and patterns as desired. Notably, the minimally permissive culture environment of fibers provides investigators with an opportunity to explore the autonomous oligodendrocyte cellular processes underlying differentiation and myelination. The simplicity of the system is conducive to monitoring oligodendrocyte proliferation, migration, differentiation and membrane wrapping in the absence of neuronal signals. Here we describe protocols for the fabrication and preparation of nanofibers aligned on glass coverslips for the study of membrane wrapping by rodent oligodendrocytes. The entire protocol can be completed within 2 weeks.