The differentiation of oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) into myelinating oligodendrocytes is the prerequisite for remyelination in demyelinated disorders such as multiple sclerosis (MS). Epigenetic mechanisms, such as DNA methylation, have been suggested to control the intricate network of transcription factors involved in OPC differentiation. Yet, the exact mechanism remains undisclosed. Here, we are the first to identify the DNA-binding protein inhibitors, Id2 and Id4, as targets of DNA methylation during OPC differentiation. Using state-of-the-art epigenetic editing via CRISPR/dCas9-DNMT3a, we confirm that targeted methylation of Id2/Id4 drives OPC differentiation. Moreover, we show that in the pathological context of MS, methylation and gene expression levels of both ID2 and ID4 are altered compared to control human brain samples. We conclude that DNA methylation is crucial to suppress ID2 and ID4 during OPC differentiation, a process that appears to be dysregulated during MS. Our data do not only reveal new insights into oligodendrocyte biology, but could also lead to a better understanding of CNS myelin disorders.

Human pluripotent stem cell (PSC) technology and direct somatic cell reprogramming have opened up a promising new avenue in the field of neuroscience. These recent advances allow researchers to obtain virtually any cell type found in the human brain, making it possible to produce and study functional neurons in laboratory conditions for both scientific and medical purposes. Although distinct approaches have shown to be successful in directing neuronal cell fate in vitro, their refinement and optimization, as well as the search for alternative approaches, remains necessary to help realize the full potential of the eventually derived neuronal populations. Furthermore, we are currently limited in the number of neuronal subtypes whose induction is fully established, and different cultivation protocols for each subtype exist, making it challenging to increase the reproducibility and decrease the variances that are observed between different protocols. In this review, we summarize the progress that has been made in generating various neuronal subtypes from PSCs and somatic cells, with special emphasis on chemically defined systems, transcription factor-mediated reprogramming and epigenetic-based approaches. We also discuss the efforts that are being made to increase the efficiency of current protocols and address the potential for the use of these cells in disease modelling, drug discovery and regenerative medicine.

A reoccurring issue in neuroepigenomic studies, especially in the context of neurodegenerative disease, is the use of (heterogeneous) bulk tissue, which generates noise during epigenetic profiling. A workable solution to this issue is to quantify epigenetic patterns in individually isolated neuronal cells using laser capture microdissection (LCM). For this purpose, we established a novel approach for targeted DNA methylation profiling of individual genes that relies on a combination of LCM and limiting dilution bisulfite pyrosequencing (LDBSP). Using this approach, we determined cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) methylation rates of single alleles derived from 50 neurons that were isolated from unfixed post-mortem brain tissue. In the present manuscript, we describe the general workflow and, as a showcase, demonstrate how targeted methylation analysis of various genes, in this case, RHBDF2, OXT, TNXB, DNAJB13, PGLYRP1, C3, and LMX1B, can be performed simultaneously. By doing so, we describe an adapted data analysis pipeline for LDBSP, allowing one to include and correct CpG methylation rates derived from multi-allele reactions. In addition, we show that the efficiency of LDBSP on DNA derived from LCM neurons is similar to the efficiency obtained in previously published studies using this technique on other cell types. Overall, the method described here provides the user with a more accurate estimation of the DNA methylation status of each target gene in the analyzed cell pools, thereby adding further validity to this approach.