Here, live-imaging of cortical slices from mice at embryonic day 16 (E16) and E18 revealed that OPCs 'crawl' along blood vessels. WNT-activated OPCs expressed the chemokine receptor CXCR4, which binds endothelial stromal cell-derived factor 1 (SDF1), and application of an antagonist of the CXCR4–SDF1 interaction prevented OPC clustering on blood vessels of mice with upregulated WNT signalling. Thus, WNT signalling promotes OPC–endothelial cell attachment during migration.
References
Tsai, H.-H. et al. Oligodendrocyte precursors migrate along vasculature in the developing nervous system. Science 351, 379–384 (2016)
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Bray, N. Tyrolean traversing through the brain. Nat Rev Neurosci 17, 138 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2016.15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2016.15