Fig. 1

Experimental design of the study. a Visual representation of the experimental setup. The mice received, on average, an 82 kdyne contusion injury at L1 of the spinal cord, a sham surgery at L1, or were sacrificed as naive mice. The functional status of the mice was followed up by scoring on the Basso Mouse Scale (BMS). Sacrifice occurred at different time points: 1 h post-injury (hpi), 1 day post-injury (dpi), 3 dpi, 7 dpi, and 28 dpi. b The γH2AX intranuclear signal is characterized as foci (yellow box), pan-nuclear (red box), or negative (grey box). Representative images were taken with a confocal microscope (Zeiss, LSM900). c Spatial distribution of spinal cord cells at different time points following SCI. The dotted lines show the affected area based on apparent tissue damage and associated cell loss. d The affected area is defined by the 5000 μm surrounding the lesion center or homologous sites on sham and naive spinal cords. Error bars represent means ± SD