The genetic signature of perineuronal oligodendrocytes reveals their unique phenotype.

Oligodendrocytes--best known for assembling central nervous system myelin--can be categorized as precursors, myelin-forming cells and non-myelinating perineuronal cells. Perineuronal oligodendrocytes have been well characterized morphologically and ultrastructurally, but knowledge about their function remains scanty. It has been proposed that perineuronal oligodendrocytes support neurons and, following injury, transform into myelin-synthesizing cells. Recent findings implicating perineuronal oligodendrocytes in cytoarchitectural abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex of schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders shed new light on these cells. We have obtained the genetic signature of perineuronal oligodendrocytes by identifying gene expression differences between oligodendrocyte subpopulations using cell-specific tags, microarray technology, quantitative time-resolved polymerase chain reaction and bioinformatics tools. We show that perineuronal cells are the progeny of oligodendrocyte progenitors and, hence, are members of the oligodendrocyte lineage. Physiologically they exhibit a novel phenotype. Their expression of PDGFR-αβ and its growth factor ligand PDGF-CC sets them apart from members of their lineage as this receptor precludes their response to the same growth factors that act on myelinating cells. Their coordinate expression and context-specific usage of transcription factors Olig2, Ascl1 and Pax6, together with the prominent presence of transcription factors Pea3, Lhx2 and Otx2--not hitherto linked to the oligodendrocyte lineage--suggested a cell with features that blur the boundary between a neuron and a glial cell. But they also maintain a reservoir of untranslated transcripts encoding major myelin proteins presumably for a demyelinating episode. This first molecular characterization of perineuronal oligodendrocytes revealed the striking difference between the myelinating and non-myelinating phenotypes.