Expression of Ski and its role in astrocyte proliferation and migration

- Scratch injury, starvation and LPS stimulation induce reactive astrogliosis.
- Ski expression is up-regulated during the activation of astrocytes.
- Knockdown of Ski by siRNA decreases astrocytes' proliferation and migration.

Ski, as an evolutionarily conserved protein, is a versatile transcriptional regulator which widely distributes in various tissues and species. Recently, we have demonstrated for the first time that Ski was strikingly up-regulated in reactive astrocytes after spinal cord injury (SCI) in vivo, which indicates that maybe Ski is a new molecule that controls astrocytes' biological properties after SCI. However, the accurate distributions and functions of Ski in astrocytes after central nervous system (CNS) injury are still unclear. Astrocytes were collected from rats' cerebral cortex. To elucidate the expression and role of Ski in reactive astrocytes, we performed an activated astrocytes model induced by LPS and scratch injury in vitro. Our results showed that Ski gradually increased and reached a peak at 4 days, then declined at 6 days after induction by LPS. Up-regulation of Ski was accompanied with the increase in proliferation-related proteins including PCNA, CDK4 and CyclinD1. Furthermore, immunofluorescent staining analysis also demonstrated a highly positive relationship between Ski and GFAP, PCNA in astrocytes. These results indicated that Ski might play an important role in astrocyte proliferation. To further explore the role of Ski, astrocytes were transfected with Ski-specific small interfering RNA (siRNA). We found that the primary activated astrocytes' proliferation decreased significantly after transfection with Ski-specific siRNA. Surprisingly, Ski knockdown also weakened the primary astrocyte migration. Based on the above, we could conclude that Ski might play a crucial role in astrocyte proliferation and migration. This discovery might contribute to a promising therapeutic intervention in CNS injury.