Review Volume 7, Issue 10 pp 754—765

Figure 1. The age of the systemic milieu affects myogenesis, hepatogenesis AND neurogenesis.

The work on myogenesis and liver regeneration is described in [1]. The work on neurogenesis was reviewed as a part of the same manuscript (conceived, planned, executed and written by Irina and Michael Conboy and Tom Rando; Conboy et al, 2004-02-15708A) but was removed after the review. (A) BrdU was administered to 5 week parabionts at 5, 3 and 1 day before mice were sacrificed and brains were processed for immunofluorescence analysis. Sections through the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus were immunostained for BrdU (green; left panel) or Ki67 (red; right panel) to identify proliferating progenitor cells. Hoechst dye (blue) labels all nuclei. (B) Quantitation of neural stem cell proliferation as determined from experiments represented in panel (A). Counting BrdU+ cells in periodic sections and extrapolating to the entire thickness of the DG estimated the total number of proliferating neural stem cells. The scales for the young and aged animals are different because of the marked global reduction in neurogenesis in brains of old mice compared with young mice, as previously reported. Neural stem cell proliferation was significantly enhanced for old partners in heterochronic pairings, compared to those in isochronic pairs (**p < 0.005). There was an inhibition of proliferation in young partners involved in heterochronic pairings compared to those in isochronic pairings (*p < 0.05).