Platelet-derived growth factor receptor (PDGFRA)/NG2-expressing glia are distributed throughout the adult CNS. They are descended from oligodendrocyte precursors (OLPs) in the perinatal CNS, but it is not clear whether they continue to generate myelinating oligodendrocytes or other differentiated cells during normal adult life. We followed the fates of adult OLPs in Pdgfra-creER T2 /Rosa26-YFP double-transgenic mice and found that they generated many myelinating oligodendrocytes during adulthood; >20% of all oligodendrocytes in the adult mouse corpus callosum were generated after 7 weeks of age, raising questions about the function of the late-myelinating axons. OLPs also produced some myelinating cells in the cortex, but the majority of adult-born cortical cells did not appear to myelinate. We found no evidence for astrocyte production in gray or white matter. However, small numbers of projection neurons were generated in the forebrain, especially in the piriform cortex, which is the main target of the olfactory bulb.Oligodendrocytes, the myelin-forming cells of the CNS, are mostly generated during the first few postnatal weeks in rodents, peaking in the second week (postnatal day 7-14, P7-P14). They differentiate from proliferative, migratory OLPs that originate in the ventricular zones of the developing spinal cord and brain. OLPs express a characteristic set of markers, including PDGFRA and the NG2 proteoglycan, allowing OLP development to be followed in situ. Both PDGFRA and NG2 are rapidly downregulated when OLPs differentiate into oligodendrocytes 1-3 , unlike other lineage markers (for example, transcription factors SOX10 and OLIG2), which are expressed in both OLPs and oligodendrocytes. By the time of birth, OLPs are more or less evenly distributed throughout the brain, both in gray matter and developing white matter, and remain so during the early postnatal period, when oligodendrocyte production is in full swing. The size of the OLP population remains relatively stable throughout this time, presumably because, although OLPs continue to proliferate, half of the daughter cells either differentiate or die. To determine the behavior and fates of adult OLPs in vivo, we generated a transgenic mouse line that expresses a tamoxifen-inducible form of the Cre recombinase (CreER T2 ) under PDGFRA transcriptional control in a phage artificial chromosome (PAC). The PAC transgene was faithfully expressed by OLPs in the postnatal CNS. By combining PdgfracreER T2 mice with the Rosa26-YFP reporter line, we were able to induce expression of yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) de novo in adult OLPs and identify their differentiated progeny. We found that OLPs generated mature, myelinating oligodendrocytes in adult mice until at least 8 months of age, raising questions about the function of the newly myelinated axons. We were unable to find any evidence for astrocyte production from adult OLPs in either gray or white matter. Notably, we found small numbers of YFP-labeled neurons in the forebrain, particularly in th...

After central nervous system (CNS) demyelination-such as occurs during multiple sclerosis-there is often spontaneous regeneration of myelin sheaths, mainly by oligodendrocytes but also by Schwann cells. The origins of the remyelinating cells have not previously been established. We have used Cre-lox fate mapping in transgenic mice to show that PDGFRA/NG2-expressing glia, a distributed population of stem/progenitor cells in the adult CNS, produce the remyelinating oligodendrocytes and almost all of the Schwann cells in chemically induced demyelinated lesions. In contrast, the great majority of reactive astrocytes in the vicinity of the lesions are derived from preexisting FGFR3-expressing cells, likely to be astrocytes. These data resolve a long-running debate about the origins of the main players in CNS remyelination and reveal a surprising capacity of CNS precursors to generate Schwann cells, which normally develop from the embryonic neural crest and are restricted to the peripheral nervous system.

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