Back

Dying oligodendrocytes persist without mitochondria

Bame, X.; Gilani, S. Z.; Kamen, Y.; Hill, R. A.

2026-01-22 neuroscience
10.64898/2026.01.19.699752 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Myelin is an insulating, multi-layered membrane that supports axonal integrity and neural communication. Different stressors impair myelinating oligodendrocytes, leading to demyelination, inflammation, and neurodegeneration. The intracellular processes underlying oligodendrocyte degeneration and death are unclear. Here, using optically targeted DNA damage that causes single-cell demyelination, we reveal that injured mature oligodendrocytes lose mitochondria within days and persist without them for weeks to months before cell death. This differs from other oligodendrocyte lineage cells, which exhibit acute mitochondrial changes followed by rapid cell death. Conditional deletion of the mitochondrial-related gene, Fis1, in mature oligodendrocytes, similarly causes acute loss of mitochondria and prolonged cell death. The unique cell death is characterized by nuclear changes, intracellular stress, and markers of disease-associated oligodendrocytes. Thus, mitochondrial loss may be an early marker of oligodendrocyte pathology, and mitochondrial quality control is required for oligodendrocyte and myelin homeostasis.

Matching journals

The top 4 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

1
Nature Communications
○ 5641 papers in training set
Top 4%
27.1%
Similar papers in this journal
2
Glia
○ 81 papers in training set
Top 0.1%
15.4%
Similar papers in this journal
3
Cell Reports
○ 1498 papers in training set
Top 4%
6.9%
Similar papers in this journal
4
Nature Neuroscience
○ 252 papers in training set
Top 2%
4.1%
Similar papers in this journal
50% of probability mass above
5
Communications Biology
○ 993 papers in training set
Top 7%
2.8%
Similar papers in this journal
6
Cell Death & Disease
147 papers in training set
Top 1.0%
2.8%
7
The Journal of Neuroscience
● 1025 papers in training set
Top 6%
2.5%
8
Science Advances
● 1243 papers in training set
Top 14%
2.4%
9
Neuron
○ 337 papers in training set
Top 3%
2.2%
10
iScience
○ 1154 papers in training set
Top 13%
2.2%
11
eLife
● 5828 papers in training set
Top 44%
2.2%
12
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
● 2444 papers in training set
Top 25%
1.9%
13
Scientific Reports
○ 3612 papers in training set
Top 48%
1.9%
14
Acta Neuropathologica Communications
○ 89 papers in training set
Top 1%
1.8%
15
Neurobiology of Disease
○ 148 papers in training set
Top 2%
1.2%
16
Brain
◐ 168 papers in training set
Top 3%
1.1%
17
Aging Cell
○ 165 papers in training set
Top 2%
1.1%
18
npj Parkinson's Disease
○ 105 papers in training set
Top 1%
1.0%
19
Acta Neuropathologica
○ 58 papers in training set
Top 1%
1.0%
20
Molecular Neurodegeneration
○ 55 papers in training set
Top 1%
1.0%
21
EMBO Reports
○ 263 papers in training set
Top 6%
0.9%
22
Cell
○ 431 papers in training set
Top 9%
0.9%
23
PLOS Biology
● 486 papers in training set
Top 10%
0.9%

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.