Myelin sheath lengths in the central nervous system scale to axon diameter via oligodendroglial Piezo1

Abstract

Myelin sheath lengths vary by an order of magnitude in the central nervous system (CNS) and tune the timing of neuronal signaling. Thus, variation in myelin sheath length has been proposed to coordinate the timing of neuronal signaling to ultimately impact behavior. The mechanisms to establish myelin sheath length are unknown. For decades, reports have documented that in vivo myelin sheath size scales with the diameter of the ensheathed axon. We previously demonstrated diameter is sufficient to instruct myelin sheath lengths formed by rat oligodendrocytes using a synthetic axon culture system. The mechanisms of oligodendrocyte diameter-sensing and its translation into sheath elongation are still unknown. Here, we demonstrate that diameter-sensing and sheath length is locally regulated: each individual myelin sheath responds to the underlying fiber diameter. We uncover a novel mechanism for scaling myelin sheath length to fiber diameter, through mechanosensitive ion channel Piezo1. In mice in vivo, Piezo1 impacts the elongation of myelin sheaths on large diameter axons, recapitulating our in vitro results. Yet, surprisingly, there is no impact on myelin thickness with conditional Piezo1 loss. We propose Piezo1 provides a mechanism to establish hard-wired myelin sheath patterns, where oligodendrocytes transduce axon diameter into generating myelin segments with vastly different lengths.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. PLoS Biology, 2026 · DOI ↗