Int. J. Dev. Biol. 49: 209 - 220 (2005)

https://doi.org/10.1387/ijdb.041963bl

Vol 49, Issue 2-3

Special Issue: The Nogent Institute

Oligodendrocyte development in the embryonic brain: the contribution of the plp lineage

Published: 1 May 2005

Barbara Le Bras, Elli Chatzopoulou, Katharina Heydon, Salvador Martínez¹, Katzuhiko Ikenaka², Laetitia Prestoz³, Nathalie Spassky, Bernard Zalc and Jean-Léon Thomas*

Unité Mixte de Recherche INSERM U-711 & UPMC, Paris, France, ¹Instituto de Neurociencias, Universidad Miguel Hernandez, San Juan de Alicante, Spain, ²National Institut for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki National Research Instituts, Okazaki, Aichi, Japan and ³PBS- Laboratoire des Biomembranes et Signalisation Cellulaire, Université de Poitiers, France

Abstract

Oligodendrocytes are the myelin forming cells of the central nervous system. Over the last decade, their development in the embryonic brain and spinal cord has been documented following the discovery of early oligodendroglial markers. This review highlights the fundamental results obtained on the specification and migration of oligodendroglial cells and illustrates our advances in the knowledge of the cell lineage expressing plp (proteolipid protein), one of the early oligodendroglial genes.

Keywords

embryonic brain, oligodendrocyte, specification, migration, plp/dm-20