Fig. 8.

Lack of NG2 expression at both CNS/BBB and immune system levels contributes to the decrease in EAE severity observed in NG2KO mice. a Chimeric mice reconstituted with NG2KO bone-marrow cells develop a milder EAE, regardless of their inherent WT or NG2KO genotype. Data are shown as mean ± SEM daily clinical score (left panel) and mean ± SEM AUC of EAE clinical course calculated for each mouse (right panel). ^# P < 0.01. A representative of two independent experiments is presented (WT → WT, n = 10; NG2KO → WT, n = 10; NG2KO → NG2KO, n = 10; WT → NG2KO, n = 8). b Demyelination is decreased in CNS of NG2KO bone marrow recipients. Demyelinated areas were quantified by staining for myelin basic protein in spinal cord sections from WT → WT, NG2KO → WT, NG2KO → NG2KO, and WT → NG2KO EAE-affected mice (three sections per each of cervical, thoracic, and lumbar regions per mouse, n = 3–4 mice per group) sampled at chronic disease phase, 40 days post EAE induction. Data are expressed as mean ± SEM percent of demyelination. *P < 0.05. c Confocal microscopy images of cerebral cortex immunostained for claudin-5 and occludin in EAE-affected chimera mice at chronic disease stage (40 dpi) confirm the maintenance of the BBB features in NG2KO recipient chimera regardless of the donor immune cell phenotype. In EAE-affected WT recipient mice, reconstituted with WT donor (WT → WT) or NG2KO donor ((NG2KO → WT) bone marrow, the junctional staining, for both claudin-5 and occludin, is characterized by a discontinuous pattern with long, unstained tracts, whereas the NG2KO recipient counterparts (NG2KO → NG2KO and WT → NG2KO) show a continuous junctional staining. Scale bars 10 μm. Binary image rendering is shown in Supplementary Fig. S7