Deep scRNA sequencing reveals a broadly applicable Regeneration Classifier and implicates antioxidant response in corticospinal axon regeneration.

Despite substantial progress in understanding the biology of axon regeneration in the CNS, our ability to promote regeneration of the clinically important corticospinal tract (CST) after spinal cord injury remains limited. To understand regenerative heterogeneity, we conducted patch-based single-cell RNA sequencing on rare regenerating CST neurons at high depth following PTEN and SOCS3 deletion. Supervised classification with Garnett gave rise to a Regeneration Classifier, which can be broadly applied to predict the regenerative potential of diverse neuronal types across developmental stages or after injury.

Probing regenerative heterogeneity of corticospinal neurons with scRNA-Seq.

The corticospinal tract (CST) is clinically important for the recovery of motor functions after spinal cord injury. Despite substantial progress in understanding the biology of axon regeneration in the central nervous system (CNS), our ability to promote CST regeneration remains limited. Even with molecular interventions, only a small proportion of CST axons regenerate.