School of Medicine, University of California, Davis

2 ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JoVE

Neuroscience

Mouse Models of Periventricular Leukomalacia

Yan Shen¹, Jennifer M. Plane¹, Wenbin Deng¹

¹Department of Cell Biology and Human Anatomy Institute for Pediatric Regenerative Medicine School of, University of California, Davis

We established mouse models of periventricular leukomalacia (PVL), the predominant brain injury in premature infants characterized by periventricular white matter lesions. Hypoxia/ischemia with/without systemic infection are the primary causes of PVL. Unilateral carotid ligation and hypoxia exposure with/without lipopolysaccharide injection creates PVL-like lesions in P6 mice.

Biology

Differentiation of Embryonic Stem Cells into Oligodendrocyte Precursors

Peng Jiang¹, Vimal Selvaraj¹, Wenbin Deng¹

¹Department of Cell Biology and Human Anatomy Institute for Pediatric Regenerative Medicine, School of Medicine, University of California, Davis

We describe a small molecule-based protocol for differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells into oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs). This protocol generates Olig2+NG2+ OPCs with high efficiency by 30 days of differentiation. We also describe a method to generate "spiking" OPCs that can fire action potentials.