Multifocal pattern of postnatal development of the macroglial framework of the rat fimbria

Abstract

The development of the rat fimbria over the first postnatal month is associated with an approximate doubling of the tract diameter, a large increase in the number of glial cells, and the transformation of the prenatal radial glial skeleton into the adult interfascicular glial rows of solitary astrocytes and contiguous myelinating oligodendrocytes. The ventricular zone is reduced from a heterogeneous germinal layer of three or more cells thick at birth to the mature adult unicellular ependyma of homogeneous pale, mitotically inactive cells by the end of the second postnatal week. Mitoses are present throughout the body of the tract at all times, and persist, at reduced levels, in the adult. At birth the interior of the fimbria has only few scattered glial cell nuclei, largely solitary, or at most in longitudinal pairs. Over the first two postnatal weeks, the numbers and density of the interfascicular glia increase continuously. The scattered cells and cell clusters become progressively transformed into longer unicellular rows, which are aligned along the longitudinal axis of the tract, and which finally coalesce to form the continuous regular astrocyte/oligodendrocyte units that make up the interfascicular glial rows of the adult fimbrial glial skeleton. The increased cell packing density of the developing fimbrial glia is associated with a substantial decrease in nuclear and cytoplasmic size. From the end of the second postnatal week, the characteristic, large pale solitary astrocytes, and the smaller, more numerous, densely stained, closely packed oligodendrocytes are recognisable. Immunostaining for glial fibrillary acidic protein shows that immediately after birth the characteristic embryonic pattern of regular parallel radial glial processes starts to be modified by the progressive accumulation of longitudinal astrocytic processes, so the prenatal radial glial framework is rapidly transformed into the adult type of rectilinear array of radial and longitudinal processes. The development of the oligodendrocytes is shown clearly by immunostaining for myelin basic protein in enlarged, cytoplasm-rich, symmetrically placed cell pairs first seen at around P7. At P8-P10, there is a characteristic pattern of simultaneous multifocal maturation in which a single oligodendrocyte in each cluster develops a full complement of parallel, rather varicose myelinating processes. By P14 myelination is becoming confluent, oligodendrocytes are smaller, darker, with little cytoplasm, and individual myelinating processes cannot be discerned. Even at the end of the first postnatal month there are still many immature glia of indeterminate morphology. Myelination tends at first to be concentrated in the region adjacent to the hippocampus, and only reaches completion by the end of the second month.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)