A fundamental property of the central nervous system is its ability to alter its structure and function in response to external life experience, thereby enabling learning and memory. SRF is an immediate early gene and a transcription factor expressed by oligodendrocytes and downregulated with aging in the mouse hippocampus. This raises many interesting questions such as what are the SRF targets in oligodendrocyte lineage cells in health and disease? Does SRF regulate OPC plasticity and adaptive myelination? Can SRF be targeted to rejuvenate oligodendrocytes in the aging brain?
Image Acknowledgement: Illustration by David S. Goodsell, RCSB Protein Data Bank. doi: 10.2210/rcsb_pdb/goodsell-gallery-036