TY - JOUR T1 - Knocking out non-muscle myosin II in retinal ganglion cells promotes long-distance optic nerve regeneration JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/625707 SP - 625707 AU - Xue-Wei Wang AU - Shu-Guang Yang AU - Chi Zhang AU - Jin-Jin Ma AU - Yingchi Zhang AU - Bin-Bin Yang AU - Yi-Lan Weng AU - Guo-Li Ming AU - Anish R. Kosanam AU - Saijilafu AU - Feng-Quan Zhou Y1 - 2019/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/05/02/625707.abstract N2 - In addition to changed gene expression, pathological cytoskeletal dynamics in the axon is another key intrinsic barrier for axon regeneration in the central nervous system (CNS). Here we showed that knocking out myosin IIA/B in retinal ganglion cells alone was sufficient to induce marked and sustained optic nerve regeneration. Combined Lin28 overexpression and myosin IIA/B knockout led to remarkable synergistic promoting effect and long-distance axon regeneration. Immunostaining, RNA-seq and western blot analyses revealed that myosin II deletion did not affect known axon regeneration signaling pathways or the expression of regeneration associated genes. Instead, it abolished the retraction bulb formation and significantly enhanced the axon extension efficiency. The study provided clear and strong evidence that directly targeting neuronal cytoskeleton was sufficient to induce strong CNS axon regeneration, and combining gene expression in the soma and modified cytoskeletal dynamics in the axon was an optimal approach for long-distance CNS axon regeneration. ER -