Many of the genes involved in the natural repair of the injured spinal cord of the lamprey are also active in the repair of the peripheral nervous system in mammals, according to a study by a collaborative group of scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory and other institutions. This is consistent with the possibility that in the long term, the same or similar genes may be harnessed to improve spinal cord injury treatments.
“We found a large overlap with the hub of transcription factors that are driving regeneration in the mammalian peripheral nervous system,” said Jennifer Morgan, director of the MBL’s Eugene Bell Center for Regenerative Biology and Tissue Engineering, one of the authors of the study published this week in Nature Scientific Reports.