Regeneration of peripheral nerves by nerve guidance conduits: Influence of design, biopolymers, cells, growth factors, and physical stimuli.

Injuries to the peripheral nervous system (PNS) cause neuropathies that lead to weakness and paralysis, poor or absent sensation, unpleasant and painful neuropathies, and impaired autonomic function. In this regard, implanted artificial nerve guidance conduits (NGCs) used to bridge an injured site may provide appropriate biochemical and biophysical guidance cues required to stimulate regeneration across a nerve gap and restore the function of PNS. Advanced conduit design and fabrication techniques have made it possible to fabricate autograft-like structures in the NGCs with incredible precision.

Strategic Design and Fabrication of Nerve Guidance Conduits for Peripheral Nerve Regeneration.

Nerve guidance conduits (NGCs) have been drawing considerable attention as an aid to promote regeneration of injured axons across damaged peripheral nerves. Ideally, NGCs should include physical and topographic axon guidance cues embedded as part of their composition. Over the past decades, much progress has been made in the development of NGCs that promote directional axonal regrowth so as to repair severed nerves.

Physcomitrella PpORS, basal to plant type III polyketide synthases in phylogenetic trees, is a very long chain 2'-oxoalkylresorcinol synthase.

The plant type III polyketide synthases (PKSs), which produce diverse secondary metabolites with different biological activities, have successfully co-evolved with land plants. To gain insight into the roles that ancestral type III PKSs played during the early evolution of land plants, we cloned and characterized PpORS from the moss Physcomitrella. PpORS has been proposed to closely resemble the most recent common ancestor of the plant type III PKSs.