Epigenetic Regulation of Neural Differentiation from Embryonic Stem Cells

During development, ESCs in the inner cell mass of the blastocyst undergo progressive fate restriction and sequentially give rise to tissue-specific multipotent progenitor cells [1-3]. In the nervous system, neural progenitor cells (NPCs) are defined as multipotent cells capable of differentiating into neurons and glia, the latter of which include astrocytes and oligoden‐ drocytes. NPCs undergo sequential fate restriction during nervous system development [4-6]. During early embryonic development, NPCs give rise exclusively to neuronal cell types, however at later stages they differentiate into glial cell types [7, 8]. Understanding how ESCs differentiate into neuronal or glial cell types, thus, constitutes a fundamental as‐ pect of nervous system development.