Dietary restriction enhances neurogenesis and up-regulates neurotrophin expression in the hippocampus of adult mice

Autor: K. B. Seroogy, Jaewon Lee, M. P. Mattson
Rok vydání: 2008
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of Neurochemistry. 81:57-59
ISSN: 1471-4159
0022-3042
DOI: 10.1046/j.1471-4159.81.s1.19_4.x
Popis: The brain has a limited regenerative capacity, making it vulnerable to injury and disease. However, the adult central nervous system contains small populations of neural precursor cells (NPC) that can give rise to new neurons and glia, and may play important roles in learning and memory, and recovery from injury. We now report that dietary restriction (DR) enhances neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of adult male C57BL/6 mice and, in particular, increases the survival of newly generated dentate granule neurons. Triple-labelling confocal immunofluorescence analysis revealed that the majority of newly synthesized cells in the granule cell layer of the dentate gyrus exhibited a neuronal phenotype. Levels of expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) are increased by DR. We conclude that the increase in neurogenesis induced by DR results from increased survival of newly formed neurons associated with increased production of BDNF and NT-3. In addition to these findings, DR has been shown to increase the resistance of neurons against excitotoxic insult and enhance the behavioral outcome after injury. Therefore, further experiments in kainic acid (KA)-induced seizure model were performed to determine whether the enhanced neurogenesis by DR can repair damaged neuronal circuits in the adult CNS. We were unable to document replacement of new neuron in the damaged areas (regions CA3 and CA1 of the hippocampus) during a 4-week period following KA administration in either DR or control mice. Our work is the first to show that neurogenesis can be affected by diet, suggesting a contribution of enhanced neurogenesis to the beneficial effects of DR on hippocampal plasticity and resistance to neurodegenerative disorders.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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