PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Eric E. Ewan
AU  - Dan Carlin
AU  - Tassia Mangetti Goncalves
AU  - Guoyan Zhao
AU  - Valeria Cavalli
TI  - Ascending dorsal column sensory neurons respond to spinal cord injury and downregulate genes related to lipid metabolism
AID  - 10.1101/2020.05.07.083584
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.05.07.083584
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/05/09/2020.05.07.083584.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/05/09/2020.05.07.083584.full
AB  - Regeneration failure after spinal cord injury (SCI) results in part from the lack of a pro-regenerative response in injured neurons, but the response to SCI has not been examined specifically in injured sensory neurons. Using RNA sequencing of dorsal root ganglion, we determined that thoracic SCI elicits a transcriptional response distinct from sciatic nerve injury (SNI). Both SNI and SCI induced upregulation of ATF3 and Jun, yet this response failed to promote growth in sensory neurons after SCI. RNA sequencing of purified sensory neurons one and three days after injury revealed that unlike SNI, the SCI response is not sustained. Analysis of differentially expressed genes revealed that lipid biosynthetic pathways, including fatty acid biosynthesis, were differentially regulated after SCI and SNI. Pharmacologic inhibition of fatty acid synthase, the enzyme generating fatty acid, decreased axon growth in vitro. These findings suggest that decreased fatty acid synthesis inhibits axon regeneration after SCI.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.