Go, Come Back

Just as the electrical wires in your house are insulated with a layer of plastic casing to protect them and prevent dangerous short-circuits, the electrical wiring of your body – your nerves – are encased in a protective wrapping known as myelin. This is created by specialised cells called oligodendrocytes, which wrap around the long ‘wires’ of the nerves and keep them safe. But although this insulation can reform after some types of nerve damage, it’s not known whether this happens in the complex types of damage seen in the irreversible neurodegenerative condition multiple sclerosis (MS), which happens when the immune system accidentally starts attacking the myelin coating. To find out more, researchers have been tracking how oligodendrocytes recover in a mouse brain following damage with a drug that simulates MS. By following the action in real time, they can start to test potential therapies to stop or even reverse the disease.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

Writer

Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Video from work by Jennifer Orthmann-Murphy and Cody L Call, and colleagues
• The Solomon Snyder Department of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, May 2020