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. 2010 Feb 3;30(5):1839–1855. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4459-09.2010

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

BMP signaling is active during reactive gliosis after spinal cord contusion injury. A, Longitudinal spinal cord sections stained with GFAP (red). Panels represent normal uninjured cord versus the injured cord at 4 d, 1 week, and 5 weeks postinjury. At 3 and 7 d, the reactive astrocytes display long processes (arrowheads) that appear parallel to the long axis of the cord. By 5 weeks, there is a definite increase in the number of astrocytes that are present at the lesion site. For lower-magnification images see supplemental Figure 1 (available at www.jneurosci.org as supplemental material). B, Transcript levels of GFAP (normalized to GAPDH) and expressed as fold changes compared with levels in uninjured controls ± SEM. C, Transcript levels of BMP4 (blue bars) and BMP7 (red bars) were normalized to GAPDH and expressed as fold changes compared with levels in uninjured controls. D, Spinal cords at 4 d postinjury, stained with phospho-SMAD 1/5/8 (green), GFAP (red) and Hoechst nuclear stain (blue). Nuclear phospho-SMAD staining is seen in some, but not all reactive astrocytes. E, Spinal cords at 4 d postinjury, stained with BrdU (green), phospho-SMAD 1/5/8 (red) and GFAP (blue). Merged panel shows that BrdU+ and phospho-SMAD nuclei are mutually exclusive. Astrocytes that are BrdU positive have weak or low levels of nuclear phospho-SMAD. Scale bars (in A, D, E), 20 μm.