The mammalian neocortex is composed of two major neuronal cell types with distinct origins: excitatory pyramidal neurons and inhibitory interneurons, generated in dorsal and ventral progenitor zones of the embryonic telencephalon, respectively. Thus, inhibitory neurons migrate relatively long distances to reach their destination in the developing forebrain. The role of lineage in the organizati...

The mammalian Pax genes encode a family of transcription factors, which play important roles in embryonic development and organogenesis. During the central nervous system development Pax genes have substantial roles in neural differentiation and regional specification. Pax proteins are expressed in populations of nerve cells within the developing forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain and spinal cord. ...

The memory dysfunction of Alzheimer disease has been associated with a cortical cholinergic deficiency and loss of cholinergic neurons of the nucleus basalis of Meynert. This cholinergic component of Alzheimer disease can be modeled in the rat by ibotenic acid lesions of the cholinergic nucleus basalis magnocellularis. The memory impairment caused by such unilateral lesions, as reflected in pas...

The stereotyped positions occupied by individual classes of neurons are a fundamental characteristic of CNS cytoarchitecture. To study the regulation of neuronal positioning, we injected genetically labeled neural precursors derived from dorsal and ventral mouse forebrain into the telencephalic vesicles of embryonic rats. Cells from both areas were found to participate in the generation of tele...

T-box transcription factors are important determinants of embryonic cell fate and behaviour. Two T-box genes are expressed in the developing telencephalon of several vertebrate species, including amphibia, birds and mammals. Here we report the cloning of zebrafish T-brain-1 (tbr1) and eomesodermin (eom). As a prelude to genetic studies of neuro-ectodermal fate determination we studied their exp...

Luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) neurons migrate from the vomeronasal organ (VNO) to the forebrain in all mammals studied. In mice, most LHRH neuron migration is dependent on axons that originate in the VNO but bypass the olfactory bulb and project into the basal forebrain. Thus, cues that regulate the trajectories of these vomeronasal axons are candidates for determining the destin...

Members of the NGF family of proteins act as neurotrophic agents for defined populations of peripheral and central neurons during embryonic and postnatal development. We have studied the presence of receptors for brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and neurotrophin-3 and -4/5 (NT-3, NT-4/5) by cross-linking radioiodinated neurotrophins to specific cell surface receptors. We have identified...

We report the cloning and expression analysis of a mouse gene encoding a novel transmembrane protein. Expression of Sef is similar to that of Fgf8 and Spry2 during early embryogenesis, being prominent in the forebrain, mid-hindbrain boundary, branchial arches, somites, limb bud and tailbud of mouse embryos. These expression profiles indicate that Fgf8, Spry2 and Sef belong to a synexpression gr...

Schizophrenia (SZ) is a devastating psychiatric disorder hypothesized to be a neurodevelopmental condition (1,2) arising as a consequence of dysregulation of brain development (3,4). WNT signaling is important for neural patterning, proliferation and migration, and synapse formation (5); converging postmortem (6,7), rodent (8,9), and pharmacologic (10) evidence suggests that WNT signaling may c...

background: since embryonic stem (es) cells have the dual ability to proliferate indefinitely and differentiate into multiple tissue types, es cells could potentially provide an unlimited cell supply for human transplantation. objective: in order to study the differentiation of mouse embryonic stem (mes) cells, they were cultured in suspension by using es media without leukemia inhibitory facto...