Neural repair in an insect central nervous system: cell kinetics and proliferation after selective glial disruption

Summary

Autoradiographs of tritiated thymidine uptake and subsequent light- and electron-microscopical examination revealed an onset of perineurial glial cell proliferation 3 days after injury to the CNS. The number of cells labelled increased rapidly until 7 days post-lesioning. At 2 weeks, the labelled cells equalled the number of nuclei present in the perineurium. No label was seen in the subperineurial cells, possibly because of the inability of the label to penetrate into a region where localised division is taking place.

Prior to the onset of thymidine uptake, the damaged nerve cord was invaded by an exogenous reactive cell. The number of these cells increased rapidly in the first 48 h, then decreased as a negative exponential, very few remaining after 7 days. We suggest that this cell type must either return to the haemocoel or transform into a functional glial cell class.

The repair of the insect central nervous system can be divided into three phases which show striking similarities to vertebrate repair sequences. These include: initial invasion of the lesion by exogenous cells, subsequent proliferation of glial cells, the longer term flux of cell numbers, their distribution and the time scale of events. This suggests that the insect CNS might provide a system for examining common cellular mechanisms and events.