{"doi":"10.1074/jbc.ra120.015595","title":"N-acetylglucosamine drives myelination by triggering oligodendrocyte precursor cell differentiation","abstract":"Myelination plays an important role in cognitive development and in demyelinating diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS), where failure of remyelination promotes permanent neuro-axonal damage. Modification of cell surface receptors with branched N-glycans coordinates cell growth and differentiation by controlling glycoprotein clustering, signaling, and endocytosis. GlcNAc is a rate-limiting metabolite for N-glycan branching. Here we report that GlcNAc and N-glycan branching trigger oligodendrogenesis from precursor cells by inhibiting platelet-derived growth factor receptor-α cell endocytosis. Supplying oral GlcNAc to lactating mice drives primary myelination in newborn pups via secretion in breast milk, whereas genetically blocking N-glycan branching markedly inhibits primary myelination. In adult mice with toxin (cuprizone)-induced demyelination, oral GlcNAc prevents neuro-axonal damage by driving myelin repair. In MS patients, endogenous serum GlcNAc levels inversely correlated with imaging measures of demyelination and microstructural damage. Our data identify N-glycan branching and GlcNAc as critical regulators of primary myelination and myelin repair and suggest that oral GlcNAc may be neuroprotective in demyelinating diseases like MS.","journal":"Journal of Biological Chemistry","year":2020,"id":91526,"datarank":0.5742962094733643,"base_score":3.828641396489095,"endowment":3.828641396489095,"self_citation_contribution":0.5742962094733643,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.5742962094733643,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":45,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9465,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":281376,"name":"Alexander U. Brandt","orcid":"0000-0002-9768-014X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":458593,"name":"Sung-Uk Lee","orcid":"0000-0002-2324-0918","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":460072,"name":"Barbara L. Newton","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":225583,"name":"Judy Pawling","orcid":"0000-0003-3759-8555","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":458594,"name":"Autreen Golzar","orcid":"0000-0003-1827-7166","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":458595,"name":"Anas M. Abdel Rahman","orcid":"0000-0002-9527-9424","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":458596,"name":"Zhaoxia Yu","orcid":"0000-0001-9700-1795","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":282536,"name":"Graham Cooper","orcid":"0000-0001-8383-6476","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":282534,"name":"Michael Scheel","orcid":"0000-0002-3505-2914","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":18655,"name":"Friedemann Paul","orcid":"0000-0002-6378-0070","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":225586,"name":"James W. Dennis","orcid":"0000-0002-0295-5877","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":441397,"name":"Michael Demetriou","orcid":"0000-0001-8547-5774","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":458592,"name":"Michael Sy","orcid":"0000-0003-4826-0066","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":78,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-18T22:29:21.932251Z","pmid":"33453988","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}