During development, coordinate regulation of cell cycle exit and differentiation of neuronal precursors is essential for generation of appropriate number of neurons and proper wiring of neuronal circuits. BM88 is a neuronal protein associated in vivo with terminal neuron-generating divisions, marking the exit of proliferative cells from the cell cycle. Here, we provide functional evidence that ...

The transcription factor Nrf2 has emerged as a master regulator of the endogenous antioxidant response, which is critical in defending cells against environmental insults and in maintaining intracellular redox balance. However, whether Nrf2 has any role in neuronal cell differentiation is largely unknown. In this report, we have examined the effects of Nrf2 on cell differentiation using a neuro...

Efficient in vitro differentiation into specific cell types is more important than ever after the breakthrough in nuclear reprogramming of somatic cells and its potential for disease modeling and drug screening. Key success factors for neuronal differentiation are the yield of desired neuronal marker expression, reproducibility, length, and cost. Three main neuronal differentiation approaches a...

Differentiation of neural lineages from mesenchymal stem cells has raised the hope of generating functional cells as seed cells for nerve tissue engineering. As important gene regulators, microRNAs (miRNAs) have been speculated to play a vital role in accelerating stem cell differentiation and repairing neuron damage. However, miRNA roles in directing differentiation of stem cells in current pr...

Conventionally, neuronal development is regarded to follow a stereotypic sequence of neurogenesis, migration, and differentiation. We demonstrate that this notion is not a general principle of neuronal development by documenting the timing of mitosis in relation to multiple differentiation events for bipolar cells (BCs) in the zebrafish retina using in vivo imaging. We found that BC progenitors...

In the presence of NGF, PC12 cells extend neuronal processes, cease cell division, become electrically excitable, and undergo several biochemical changes that are detectable in developing sympathetic neurons. We investigated the expression pattern of the apoptosis-related genes at each stage of neuronal differentiation using a cDNA microarray containing 320 apoptosis-related rat genes. By compa...

Most studies of IR effects on neural cells and tissues in the brain are still focused on loss of neural stem cells. On the other hand, the effects of IR on neuronal differentiation and its implication in IR-induced brain damage are not well defined. To investigate the effects of IR on C17.2 mouse neural stem-like cells and mouse primary neural stem cells, neurite outgrowth and expression of neu...

Embryonic stem (ES) cells are powerful tools to understand mechanisms of neuronal differentiation and to engineer neurons for in vitro studies and cell therapy. We developed a screening approach to identify small organic molecules driving neuronal differentiation of ES cells. For this purpose, we used a lentivector carrying a dual luciferase reporter system to engineer an ES cell line which all...

The mammalian embryonic lethal abnormal vision (ELAV)-like protein HuD is a neuronal RNA-binding protein implicated in neuronal development, plasticity, and diseases. Although HuD has long been associated with neuronal development, the functions of HuD in neural stem cell differentiation and the underlying mechanisms have gone largely unexplored. Here we show that HuD promotes neuronal differen...

introduction: to evaluate the camp -mediated ibmx (3-isobutyle -1-methyl xanthin) and db-camp (dibutyryl camp) effects on differentiation of human embryonic stem cells (hescs) into nerve cells were the objectives of this study. methods: we have used royan h1 hesc- derived embryoid bodies with four treatment groups: six days treatment with ibmx (5×10 -4m) and db-camp (10 -9m) (referred to as cam...