Cover story

Spinal cord injury(SCI) triggers a cascade of pathological events that lead to permanent loss ofconnections between proximal and distal neurons. Neurons and glial cells, suchas astrocytes, oligodendrocytes and immune cells, can all respond to injurysignals by changing their cellular behaviors and associated transcriptionalprofiles. One emerging concept for the lack of axon regeneration following SCIis that chromatin landscapes in neurons and glial cells become unfavorable fortissue repair and regeneration. Hence, insights into how chromatin landscapescan be reshaped in favor of repair and regeneration would enlighten us on howto harness epigenetic modulation to enhance recovery after SCI.  

      In thisissue (pages 356-366), Wong and Zou review recent advances in ourunderstanding of nuclear epigenetic events that can enhance axon growthpotential by promoting the expression of regeneration-associated genes (RAGs)ininjured neurons. In addition, using SCI-induced pathological events as aframework, Wong and Zou highlight how wound-healing properties of glial cells includingastrocytes, oligodendrocytes, as well as immune cells can also be influenced byepigenetic regulation. This review thus provides an integrated viewpoint andinsights into future directions of utilizing epigenetic tools to reshape the chromatinlandscapes to promote recovery after SCI.(See pages 356-366 by Jamie K. Wong and Hongyan Zoufor more information)

Contents

Volume 9 issue 5

Reviews

Modeling murine yolk sac hematopoiesis with embryonic stem cell culture systems

Brandoch D. COOK()

1.pdf

The correlation between iron homeostasis and telomere maintenance

Caiguo ZHANG()

2.pdf

Reshaping the chromatin landscape after spinal cord injury

Jamie K. WONG¹,Hongyan ZOU^1,2,*()

3.pdf

Regulation and function of stimulus-induced phosphorylation of MeCP2

Hongda LI^1,2,Qiang CHANG^1,2,3,*()

4.pdf

The role of Nkx3.2 in chondrogenesis

Roshni S. RAINBOW¹,Heenam KWON²,Li ZENG^1,2,3,*()

5.pdf

dsRNA binding protein PACT/RAX in gene silencing, development and diseases

Yue YONG¹,Jia LUO^2,*(),Zun-Ji KE^1,3,*()

6.pdf

RNA-binding proteins in pluripotency, differentiation, and reprogramming

Diana GUALLAR^1,2,Jianlong WANG^1,2,3,*()

7.pdf

Research article

Computational screening of disease associated mutations on NPC1 gene and its structural consequence in Niemann-Pick type-C1

Naresh KANDAKATLA^1,*(),Geetha RAMAKRISHNAN¹,Rajasekhar CHEKKARA¹,Namachivayam BALAKRISHNAN²

8.pdf