In the recent years adult neural and mesenchymal stem cells have been intensively investigated as effective resources for repair therapies. In vivo and in vitro studies have provided insights on the molecular mechanisms underlying the neurogenic and osteogenic processes in adulthood. This knowledge appears fundamental for the development of targeted strategies to manipulate stem cells. Here we ...

Although glial cells missing (gcm) genes are known as glial determinants in the fly embryo, the role of vertebrate orthologs in the central nervous system is still under debate. Here we show for the first time that the chicken ortholog of fly gcm (herein referred to as c-Gcm1), is expressed in early neuronal lineages of the developing spinal cord and is required for neural progenitors to differ...

Given the complexity and heterogeneity of the genomic architecture underlying schizophrenia, molecular analyses of these patients with defined and large effect-size genomic defects could provide valuable clues. We established human-induced pluripotent stem cells from two schizophrenia patients with the 22q11.2 deletion (two cell lines from each subject, total of four cell lines) and three contr...

In both invertebrates and vertebrates, transcriptional co-repressors of the Groucho/transducin-like Enhancer of split (Gro/TLE) family regulate a number of developmental mechanisms, including neuronal differentiation. The pleiotropic activity of Gro/TLE depends on context-specific interactions with a variety of DNA-binding proteins. Most of those factors engage Gro/TLE through two different typ...

Neural precursors generate neurons in the embryonic brain and restricted niches of adult a process called neurogenesis. The precise control cell proliferation differentiation time space required for neurogenesis depends on sophisticated orchestration gene transcription neural precursor cells. Much progress has been made understanding transcriptional regulation neurogenesis, which relies dose- c...

The potential applications of neural stem cells (NSC) in the therapy of degenerative and traumatic diseases of the central nervous system (CNS) have aroused great scientific interest. NSCs can be recovered from specific areas of the CNS from fetuses, embryos and from adult brain as well, and under appropriate culture conditions, may be induced to differentiate into the three major neural cell t...

Proper spatial control of neurogenesis in the inner ear ensures the precise innervation of mechanotransducing cells and the propagation of auditory and equilibrium stimuli to the brain. Members of the Hairy and enhancer of split (Hes) gene family regulate neurogenesis by inhibiting neuronal differentiation and maintaining neural stem cell pools in non-neurogenic zones. Remarkably, their role in...

The engineering of tissue is preferably done with stem cells, which can be differentiated into the tissue of interest using biochemical or physical cues. While much effort has been focused on using biological factors to regulate stem cell differentiation, recently interest in the contribution of physical factors has increased. In this work, three-dimensional (3-D) microchannels with topographic...

Neural stem and progenitor cells undergo an important transition from proliferation to differentiation in the G1 phase of the cell cycle. The mechanisms coordinating this transition are incompletely understood. Cyclin D proteins promote proliferation in G1 and typically are down-regulated before differentiation. Here we show that motoneuron progenitors in the embryonic spinal cord persistently ...