Cerebral ischemia induces neurogenesis, including proliferation and differentiation of neural progenitor cells and migration of newly generated neuroblasts. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs that decrease gene expression through mRNA destabilization and/or translational repression. Emerging data indicate that miRNAs have a role in mediating processes of proliferation and differentiati...

Some Chinese herbs are anti-thrombolysis, and anti-inflammatory, improves brain RNA content, promotes brain protein synthesis, enhances dopamine function, regulates brain hormones, and improves microcirculation in central nervous system that might improve, repair and rehabilitation from the stroke and brain injury. Specific Chinese herbs and their components, such as Acanthopanax, Angelica, cou...

Neural stem/progenitor cells capable of differentiating into the neurons and glial cells that populate the mammalian central nervous system (CNS) persist in specific neural stem cell niches that regulate stem cell proliferation, survival and differentiation. There is growing evidence that the extracellular matrix within neural stem cell niches is required for neural stem cell maintenance. Here,...

Differentiation of neural progenitor cells (NPCs) is important for protecting neural cells and brain tissue during inflammation. Interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β) is the most common pro- inflammatory cytokine in brain inflammation, and increased IL-1β levels can decrease the proliferation of NPCs. We aimed to investigate whether agmatine (Agm), a primary polyamine that protects neural cells, could tri...

BACKGROUND In vitro simulation of developmental processes is an invaluable tool to shed light on the intrinsic mechanism of developmental biosystems such as central nervous system in mammals. Chick somites have been used to simulate the neural differentiation of human neural progenitor cells. In the present study, we aimed to indicate whether somites have the ability to express required neural ...

Introduction: Recent reports showed allogenic neurotrophic Schwann-cell factors could induce neural differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells, so we want to investigate whether heterogeneic neurotrophic Schwann-cell factors could induce neural differentiation of periodontal ligament stem cells (PDLSCs). Material and methods: We isolated and multiplied PDLSCs from periodontal ligament of 8 month...

Embryogenesis, regeneration and cell differentiation in microbiological entities are influenced by mechanical forces. Therefore, development of mechanical properties of these materials is important. Neural network technique is a useful method which can be used to obtain cell deformation by the means of force-geometric deformation data or vice versa. Prior to insertion in the needle injection pr...

Neural stem cell-based approaches to repair damaged white matter in the central nervous system have shown great promise; however, the optimal cell population to employ in these therapies remains undetermined. A default mechanism of neural induction may function during development, and in embryonic stem cells (ESCs) neural differentiation is elicited in the absence of any extrinsic signaling in ...

During the initial stages of vertebrate retinogenesis, cells of the optic vesicle adopt one of two alternate cell fates. Cells in the distal-most part of the vesicle, immediately beneath the surface ectoderm, undergo neural differentiation; cells in the proximal part differentiate into retinal pigmented epithelial cells. The mechanisms that establish this pattern of differentiation are poorly u...

Presenilin-1 (PS1) is the catalytic core of the aspartyl protease γ-secretase. Previous genetic studies using germ-line deletion of PS1 and conditional knock-out mice demonstrated that PS1 plays an essential role in neuronal differentiation during neural development, but it remained unclear whether PS1 plays a similar role in neurogenesis in the adult brain. Here we show that neural progenitor ...