Neural Stem/Progenitor Cells of the Spinal Cord are Activated in Response to Tail Loss in the Leopard Gecko
Bibliographic record
Abstract
As for many lizards, the leopard gecko ( Eublepharis macularius ) is able to self‐detach its tail as an anti‐predation strategy and subsequently regenerate a replacement. The replacement tail includes a regenerated spinal cord. We hypothesize that endogenous neural stem progenitor cells (NSPCs) are present in the original spinal cord and that these cells are activated during regeneration. As many stem cells are slow cycling, we used a Bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) pulse‐chase experiment to identify label‐retaining populations in the original spinal cord. We also conducted a spatiotemporal characterization of spinal cord cells before and during regeneration using a panel of common NSPC markers (including Sox2, Sox9, Vimentin, βIII‐Tubulin and Musashi‐1, and the proliferation marker PCNA). BrdU retaining cells were still present after a 20‐week chase. Prior to injury, expression of NSPC markers is limited, but co‐localization of BrdU and Sox2 in ependymal cells was observed. Following tail loss, ependymal cells in the original stump of the tail become highly proliferative and express our panel of NSPC markers. Outgrowth of the new tail is matched by proliferating, NSPC marker‐positive ependymal cells. These cells appear to contribute to regenerating spinal cord. We conclude that ependymal cells are a likely source of endogenous NSPCs in the gecko and that they are activated following tail loss. NSERC Grant: 400358
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".