Reconstituting the ovarian follicle: Recent advances have enabled the generation of oocytes from pluripotent stem cells in vitro. However, these cells require a somatic environment to develop fully as reproductive cells. Yoshino et al. applied what is known about differentiation processes in vivo to determine a culture condition to differentiate embryonic stem cells into gonadal somatic cell–like cells (see the Perspective by Yang and Ng). When the embryonic stem cell–generated ovarian gonadal tissue was combined with early primordial germ cells or in vitro–derived primordial germ cell–like cells, germ cells developed into viable oocytes within the reconstituted follicles that could be fertilized and result in viable offspring. This system enables an alternative method for mouse gamete production and advances our understanding of mammalian reproduction and development. Science , abe0237, this issue p. eabe0237 ; see also abj8347, p. 282

Pathological conditions such as epilepsy cause misregulation of adult neural stem/progenitor populations in the adult hippocampus in mice, and the resulting abnormal neurogenesis leads to impairment in learning and memory. However, how animals cope with abnormal neurogenesis remains unknown. Here we show that microglia in the mouse hippocampus attenuate convulsive seizure-mediated aberrant neurogenesis through the activation of Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9), an innate immune sensor known to recognize microbial DNA and trigger inflammatory responses. We found that microglia sense self-DNA from degenerating neurons following seizure, and secrete tumour necrosis factor-α, resulting in attenuation of aberrant neurogenesis. Furthermore, TLR9 deficiency exacerbated seizure-induced cognitive decline and recurrent seizure severity. Our findings thus suggest the existence of bidirectional communication between the innate immune and nervous systems for the maintenance of adult brain integrity.

Rett syndrome (RTT) is a neurodevelopmental disorder caused by MECP2 mutations. Although emerging evidence suggests that MeCP2 deficiency is associated with dysregulation of mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR), which functions as a hub for various signaling pathways, the mechanism underlying this association and the molecular pathophysiology of RTT remain elusive. We show here that MeCP2 promotes the posttranscriptional processing of particular microRNAs (miRNAs) as a component of the microprocessor Drosha complex. Among the MeCP2-regulated miRNAs, we found that miR-199a positively controls mTOR signaling by targeting inhibitors for mTOR signaling. miR-199a and its targets have opposite effects on mTOR activity, ameliorating and inducing RTT neuronal phenotypes, respectively. Furthermore, genetic deletion of miR-199a-2 led to a reduction of mTOR activity in the brain and recapitulated numerous RTT phenotypes in mice. Together, these findings establish miR-199a as a critical downstream target of MeCP2 in RTT pathogenesis by linking MeCP2 with mTOR signaling.

Background: The majority of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) involved in mRNA metabolism in mammals have been believed to downregulate the corresponding mRNA expression level in a pre- or post-transcriptional manner by forming short or long ncRNA-mRNA duplex structures. Information on non-duplex-forming long ncRNAs is now also rapidly accumulating. To examine the directional properties of transcription at the whole-genome level, we performed directional RNA-seq analysis of mouse and chimpanzee tissue samples. Results: We found that there is only about 1% of the genome where both the top and bottom strands are utilized for transcription, suggesting that RNA-RNA duplexes are not abundantly formed. Focusing on transcription start sites (TSSs) of protein-coding genes revealed that a significant fraction of them contain switching-points that separate antisense- and sense-biased transcription, suggesting that head-to-head transcription is more prevalent than previously thought. More than 90% of head-to-head type promoters contain CpG islands. Moreover, CCG and CGG repeats are significantly enriched in the upstream regions and downstream regions, respectively, of TSSs located in head-to-head type promoters. Genes with tissue-specific promoter-associated ncRNAs (pancRNAs) show a positive correlation between the expression of their pancRNA and mRNA, which is in accord with the proposed role of pancRNA in facultative gene activation, whereas genes with constitutive expression generally lack pancRNAs. Conclusions: We propose that single-stranded ncRNA resulting from head-to-head transcription at GC-rich sequences regulates tissue-specific gene expression.