Following injury, the axons of regenerating optic nerves need to be guided back to their original targets. The glial cell-derived signals that accomplish this, however, remain unidentified. Now, Beth M. Harvey, Michael Granato and colleagues study axon guidance in a larval zebrafish model of optic nerve regeneration, and show that the collagen-modifying enzyme Lh3 is required to guide axons of regenerating optic nerves back along their original trajectories. To hear more about how this paper developed and the people behind it, we spoke to first and corresponding author Beth M. Harvey, as well as corresponding author Michael Granato, Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, USA.
A 2026 study studied this question.