Myelination Essay

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Oligodendrocytes are neural cells that are responsible for producing the myelin sheath (myelination) and wrapping it around the axons of neurons. Myelin provides a thick insulating cover to the axons so as to improve electrical conduction and decrease charge loss during conduction. This is a vital biological aspect, as the loss of the myelin sheath (demyelination) causes deleterious effects in the central and peripheral nervous system. Demyelination has been implicated as a pathological feature in traumatic brain and spinal cord injury, ageing and a wide range of neurodegenerative disorders such as multiple sclerosis. In order to understand the cause of demyelination and to come up with an effective treatment to it, the underlying mechanisms of this process must be elucidated. This can be done via establishing animal models and carrying out physiological and genetic studies on them.
Zebrafish (Danio rerio) has recently emerged as a good in vivo vertebrate model for studying the process of myelination. Due to the rapid early development of its embryos, myelination can be observed around 60 hours post fertilization, as compared to the post-natal myelination in mammals (Buckley CE, 2010). Despite the vast genetic distance between …show more content…
This is possible as the zebrafish larvae are transparent, and it is possible to obtain mutant strains that sustain the transparency through to adulthood. It allows in vivo visualization of the CNS, which is valuable in carrying out functional imaging studies of neural activity and neural development (Panier, 2013; Misha B Ahrens, 2013). It is through such studies that the physical aspect of myelination has been observed and understood. In a recent study, the researchers were able to observe and test the assembly of myelin layers in the CNS, for the first time (Nicolas Snaidero,
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