Description: Brain regeneration upon injury requires a precise coordination of complex cellular and molecular responses in a time- and region-specific manner. Identifying key types of cells directing specific brain regeneration processes and underlying mechanisms hold great promise for the advance of regenerative medicine. However, progress in the field has been hampered largely due to lack of injury recovery capacity of mammal brain models and appropriate tools to comprehensively dissect the regeneration process at molecular level. Here, using the brain injury model of axolotl that can almost fully regenerate the injured tissue, and the high-resolution Stereo-seq (Spatio-Temporal Enhanced REsolution Omics-sequencing), we present the first in situ transcriptomic atlas at single-nuclei resolution that enables spatial characterization of cells combined with global gene expression information throughout brain development and regeneration. Excitingly, we discovered a marked heterogeneity of radial glial cell (RGC) types with distinct behaviors. Particularly, one subtype of RGCs is immediately activated at early stages of telencephalon regeneration and start to proliferate while other RGCs remain dormant. Such RGC subtype appears to be the major cell type gradually covering the injured area before potentially transformed into the lost neurons of exactly the same cellular identity. Altogether, our study provides a systematic dissection of the molecular events underlying neural cell plasticity in the amphibian brain, laying the foundation for further mechanistic studies in this and other species.

Data type: Raw sequence reads; Transcriptome or Gene expression

Sample scope: Multiisolate

Release date: 2021-10-26

Last updated: 2021-08-01

Data size: 7.67TB