Year 5

The adult brain contains reservoirs of neural stem cells that are critical for the formation of new neurons, oligodendrocytes, and astrocytes in the adult brain. During aging, the number of neural stem cells and their ability to give rise to new neurons strikingly decline. This decline could underlie at least in part the decline in memory that occurs during aging. We are interested in the importance of genes that regulate organismal longevity in the control of the reservoir of neural stem cells. We discovered that Foxo3, a transcription factor that has been implicated in human exceptional longevity, is important for regulating the neural stem cell pool pool. In the past year, we have made extensive progress in characterizing the interaction between Foxo3 and specific chromatin states at target genes in adult neural stem cells, which provides us with a mechanistic view onto how longevity genes can affect specific networks of target genes in neural stem cells in adult organisms. In the past year, we have made significant progress in testing the role of a gene involved in healthspan and longevity in a number of organisms, the deacetylase Sirt1, in adult neural stem cell function. We have observed that Sirt1 inactivation, whether genetic or pharmacological, leads to an increase in oligodendrocyte progenitors, which are cells that are important for myelination of axons. We have found that Sirt1 inactivation is beneficial for models of demyelinating injuries and diseases, which has important consequences for multiple sclerosis. Finally, we are making progress in reprogramming adult human fibroblasts into induced pluripotent stem cells and induced NSCs, with the aim to test the importance of longevity genes in this process.