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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Cell Dev. Biol.
Sec. Morphogenesis and Patterning
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcell.2025.1529093
This article is part of the Research Topic De Novo Cell Polarity Establishment in Development and Disease View all 4 articles

Xenopus laevis Neural Stem Progenitor Cells Exhibit a Transient Metabolic Shift Toward Glycolysis During Spinal Cord Regeneration

Provisionally accepted
Paula G Slater Paula G Slater 1,2*Miguel E Domínguez-Romero Miguel E Domínguez-Romero 3Guillermo C Campos Guillermo C Campos 1,2Vania Aravena Vania Aravena 2,4Javier Cavieres-Lepe Javier Cavieres-Lepe 3Verónica Eisner Verónica Eisner 3
  • 1 Departamento de Ciencias Biológicas y Químicas, Facultad de Medicina y Ciencias, Universidad San Sebastián, Campus Los Leones, Lota 2465, Providencia, Santiago, Chile
  • 2 Laboratorio de Neuro Regeneración y Metabolismo, Fundación Ciencia & Vida, Huechuraba., Santiago, Chile
  • 3 Departamento de Biología Celular y Molecular, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Alameda 340, Santiago, Santiago, Chile
  • 4 Departamento de Ciencias Biológicas y Químicas, Facultad de Medicina y Ciencia, Universidad San Sebastián, Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), Chile

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Spinal cord injury (SCI) results in severe disruption of communication between the brain and body, causing motor, sensory, and autonomic dysfunctions. While SCI in mammals leads to permanent impairment due to limited regenerative capacity, certain non-mammalian species, such as Xenopus laevis larval stages, exhibit remarkable regenerative abilities. During Xenopus laevis spinal cord regeneration, neural stem precursor cells (NSPCs) surrounding the central canal rapidly proliferate in response to SCI, compensating for cellular loss, restoring canal continuity, and generating new neurons to reestablish lost connections. It has been described that mitochondria and cellular metabolism play essential roles in stem cell proliferation, self-renewal, and differentiation. However, the mitochondrial and cellular metabolic response during spinal cord regeneration remains unexplored. This study uses electron and confocal microscopy to investigate the NSPCs mitochondrial response in Xenopus laevis following SCI. We observed that mitochondria exhibit a rapid and transient response after SCI, characterized by a disruption of the mitochondrial localization, a decrease in mitochondrial number per cell section, and an increase in mitochondrial area and circularity. Furthermore, mitochondria adopted a swollen phenotype, which did not impair mitochondrial function or cellular energy production. This morphological shift was accompanied by a transient decrease in the mitochondrial membrane potential and a metabolic switch favoring glycolysis. Therefore, these findings demonstrate that a transient metabolic shift toward glycolysis occurs during spinal cord regeneration.

    Keywords: NSPCs Glycolytic Shift During Regeneration Spinal cord injury, Glycolitic shift, Regeneration, neural stem progenitor cells (NSPCs), Metabolic Regulation, Mitochondria

    Received: 15 Nov 2024; Accepted: 10 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Slater, Domínguez-Romero, Campos, Aravena, Cavieres-Lepe and Eisner. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Paula G Slater, Departamento de Ciencias Biológicas y Químicas, Facultad de Medicina y Ciencias, Universidad San Sebastián, Campus Los Leones, Lota 2465, Providencia, Santiago, Chile

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