This week’s Round Up is all about the brain with some CRISPR and iPSCs sprinkled in:

Our Cool Stem Cell Image of the Week comes from Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute:

(Credit: Jon Enriquez/Mann Lab/Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute).

This rainbow sherbet-colored scientific art is a microscopy image of a fruit fly nervous system in which brain cells were randomly labeled with different colors. It was a figure in a Neuron study published this week showing how cells derived from the same stem cells can go down very different developmental paths but then later are “reunited” to carry out key functions, such as in this case, the nervous system control of leg movements.

A new therapeutic avenue for Parkinson’s disease – Buck Institute

Many animal models of Parkinson’s disease are created by mutating specific genes to cause symptoms that mimic this incurable, neurodegenerative disorder. But, by far, most cases of Parkinson’s are idiopathic, a fancy term for spontaneous with no known genetic cause. So, researchers at the Buck Institute took another approach: they generated a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease using the pesticide, paraquat, exposure to which is known to increase the risk of the idiopathic form of Parkinson’s.

Their CIRM-funded study in Cell Reports showed that exposure to paraquat leads to cell senescence – in which cells shut down and stop dividing – particularly in astrocytes, brain cells that support the function of nerve cells. Ridding the mice of these astrocytes relieved some of the Parkinson’s like symptoms. What makes these results so intriguing is the team’s analysis of post-mortem brains from Parkinson’s patients also showed the hallmarks of increased senescence in astrocytes. Perhaps, therapeutic approaches that can remove senescent cells may yield novel Parkinson’s treatments.

Discovery may advance neural stem cell treatments for brain disorders – Sanford-Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (via Eureka Alert)

Another CIRM-funded study published this week in Nature Neuroscience may also help pave the way to new treatment strategies for neurologic disorders like Parkinson’s disease. A team at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) discovered a novel gene regulation system that brain stem cells use to maintain their ability to self-renew.

The study centers around messenger RNA, a molecular courier that transcribes a gene’s DNA code and carries it off to be translated into a protein. The team found that the removal of a chemical tag on mRNA inside mouse brain stem cells caused them to lose their stem cell properties. Instead, too many cells specialized into mature brain cells leading to abnormal brain development in animal studies. Team lead Jing Crystal Zhao, explained how this finding is important for future therapeutic development:

Crystal Zhao

“As NSCs are increasingly explored as a cell replacement therapy for neurological disorders, understanding the basic biology of NSCs–including how they self-renew–is essential to harnessing control of their in vivo functions in the brain.”

Researchers Create First Stem Cells Using CRISPR Genome Activation – The Gladstone Institutes

Our regular readers are most likely familiar with both CRISPR gene editing and induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technologies. But, in case you missed it late last week, a Cell Stem Cell study out of Sheng Ding’s lab at the Gladstone Institutes, for the first time, combined the two by using CRISPR to make iPSCs. The study got a lot of attention including a review by Paul Knoepfler in his blog The Niche. Check it out for more details!