GABAergic and glutamatergic neurons modulate inhibitory and excitatory networks in the CNS, and their impairment may cause neurological and psychiatric disorders. Thus, understanding the molecular mechanisms that control neurotransmitter phenotype and identity of excitatory and inhibitory progenitors has considerable relevance. Here we investigated the consequence of Otx2 (orthodenticle homolog...

Embryonic stem (ES) cells differentiate into neuroectodermal progenitors when cultured as floating aggregates in serum-free conditions. Here, we show that strict removal of exogenous patterning factors during early differentiation steps induces efficient generation of rostral hypothalamic-like progenitors (Rax(+)/Six3(+)/Vax1(+)) in mouse ES cell-derived neuroectodermal cells. The use of growth...

Hippocampal dentate granule cells are among the few neuronal cell types generated throughout adult life in mammals. In the normal brain, new granule cells are generated from progenitors in the subgranular zone and integrate in a typical fashion. During the development of epilepsy, granule cell integration is profoundly altered. The new cells migrate to ectopic locations and develop misoriented ...

In the adult olfactory epithelium, the transcription factors Pax6 and Sox2 are co-expressed in sustentacular cells, horizontal basal cells (HBCs), and less-differentiated globose basal cells (GBCs)-both multipotent and transit amplifying categories-but are absent from immediate neuronal precursor GBCs and olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs). We used retroviral-vector transduction to over-express P...

Adult neurogenesis, a concept emergent in the late 1990s, is the generation of new neurons in the adult brain. This process occurs thank to cells who have this proliferative feature, named as Neural Stem Cells (NSCs). Neural Stem Cells (NSCs) are primary progenitors who can generate the two neural types (neurons and glia). Classically it was assumed that NSCs are only present in the embryo, but...

recombinant human erythropoietin is a glycoprotein hormone that stimulates erythropoiesis. in clonogenic assays of hematopoietic progenitors, high concen-trations of erythropoietin (epo) increase cfu-e and diminish the number of granulocytes formed per culture plate. fetal progenitors are more sensitive to these effects of epo than progenitors from adults. we administered doses 50, 100, 200 iu/...

Adult neurogenesis, or the creation of new neurons in adult organisms, is an exciting recent area of neurological research. The subgranular zone of the adult hippocampus is one area where hippocampal neural progenitors generate new neurons that functionally integrate into existing neuronal circuitry. Given the role that the hippocampus plays in learning and memory consolidation and its vulnerab...

Progenitors in the developing central nervous system acquire neural potential and proliferate to expand the pool of precursors competent to undergo neuronal differentiation. The formation and maintenance of neural-competent precursors are regulated by SoxB1 transcription factors, and evidence that their expression is regionally regulated suggests that specific signals regulate neural potential ...

Antibodies that block Sonic Hedgehog (SHH) signaling have been used to show that SHH activity is required for the induction of floor plate differentiation by the notochord and independently for the induction of motor neurons by both the notochord and midline neural cells. Motor neuron generation depends on two critical periods of SHH signaling: an early period during which naive neural plate ce...

GABA exerts excitatory actions on embryonic and neonatal cortical neurons, but the in vivo function of this GABA excitation is essentially unknown. Using in utero electroporation, we eliminated the excitatory action of GABA in a subpopulation of rat ventricular progenitors and cortical neurons derived from these progenitors by premature expression of the Cl- transporter KCC2, as confirmed by th...