Neural stem/progenitor cell (NSPC) transplantation is a promising therapy for spinal cord injury (SCI). However, little is known about NSPC from the adult human spinal cord as a donor source. We demonstrate for the first time that multipotent and self-renewing NSPC can be cultured, passaged and transplanted from the adult human spinal cord of organ transplant donors. Adult human spinal cord NSP...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are regulators of myriad cellular events, but evidence for a single miRNA that can efficiently differentiate multipotent stem cells into a specific lineage or regulate direct reprogramming of cells into an alternative cell fate has been elusive. Here we show that miR-145 and miR-143 are co-transcribed in multipotent murine cardiac progenitors before becoming localized to smoo...

The classical model of hematopoiesis has long held that hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) sit at the apex of a developmental hierarchy in which HSCs undergo long-term self-renewal while giving rise to cells of all the blood lineages. In this model, self-renewing HSCs progressively lose the capacity for self-renewal as they transit into short-term self-renewing and multipotent progenitor states, w...

Skin-derived precursor (SKP) cells are a valuable resource for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, because they represent multipotent stem cells that differentiate into neural and mesodermal progenies. Previous studies suggest that the stem cell pool decreases with age. Here, we show that human multipotent SKP cells can be efficiently collected from adult cheek/chin skin, even in aged...

A fundamental problem in developmental biology concerns how multipotent precursors choose specific fates. Neural crest cells (NCCs) are multipotent, yet the mechanisms driving specific fate choices remain incompletely understood. Sox10 is required for specification of neural cells and melanocytes from NCCs. Like sox10 mutants, zebrafish shady mutants lack iridophores; we have proposed that sox1...

The composition of the conducting airway epithelium varies significantly along the proximal to distal axis, with that of the tracheal epithelium exhibiting the greatest complexity. A number of progenitor cells have been proposed to contribute to the maintenance of this cellular diversity both in the steady state and in response to injury. However, individual roles for each progenitor cell type ...

Cranial neural crest cells give rise to ectomesenchymal derivatives such as cranial bones, cartilage, smooth muscle, dentin, as well as melanocytes, corneal endothelial cells, and neurons and glial cells of the peripheral nervous system. Previous studies have suggested that although multipotent stem-like cells may exist during the course of cranial neural crest development, they are transient, ...

RATIONALE TBX1 encodes a T-box transcription factor implicated in DiGeorge syndrome, which affects the development of many organs, including the heart. Loss of Tbx1 results into hypoplasia of heart regions derived from the second heart field, a population of cardiac progenitors cells (CPCs). Thus, we hypothesized that Tbx1 is an important player in the biology of CPCs. OBJECTIVE We asked whet...

A fundamental question in developmental biology is how does an undifferentiated field of cells acquire spatial pattern and undergo coordinated differentiation? The development of the vertebrate limb is an important paradigm for understanding these processes. The skeletal and connective tissues of the developing limb all derive from a population of multipotent progenitor cells located in its dis...

Epigenetic silencing of transgene expression represents a major obstacle for the efficient genetic modification of multipotent and pluripotent stem cells. We and others have demonstrated that a 1.5 kb methylation-free CpG island from the human HNRPA2B1-CBX3 housekeeping genes (A2UCOE) effectively prevents transgene silencing and variegation in cell lines, multipotent and pluripotent stem cells,...