During organogenesis, neural and mesenchymal progenitor cells give rise to many cell lineages, but their molecular requirements for self-renewal and lineage decisions are incompletely understood. In this study, we show that their survival critically relies on the redundantly acting SoxC transcription factors Sox4, Sox11 and Sox12. The more SoxC alleles that are deleted in mouse embryos, the mor...

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the main causes of mortality and morbidity worldwide. Despite extensive investigations over the past few decades, no effective therapies exist to improve the brain function in patients with TBI. Neural tissue engineering is an attractive therapeutic approach to restore the brain structure and function of damaged tissue. Bioactive motif of Stromal cell-deri...

Neural stem cell self-renewal, neurogenesis, and cell fate determination are processes that control the generation of specific classes of neurons at the correct place and time. The transcription factor Pax6 is essential for neural stem cell proliferation, multipotency, and neurogenesis in many regions of the central nervous system, including the cerebral cortex. We used Pax6 as an entry point t...

Bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine-disruptor, is widely used in the production of plastics and resins. Human perinatal exposure to this chemical has been proposed to be a potential risk to public health. Animal studies indicate that postnatal exposure to BPA may affect neocortex development in embryos by accelerated neurogenesis and causing neuronal migration defects. The detailed phenotypes and p...

In recent years transdifferentiation technology has enabled direct conversion of human fibroblasts to become a valuable, abundant and accessible cell source for patient-specific induced cell generation in biomedical research. The majority of transdifferentiation approaches rely upon viral gene delivery which due to random integration with the host genome can cause genome instability and tumorig...

In addition to its antioxidant effect, Vitamin E or α–tocopherol is suggested to enhance remyelination in the animal model of non-inflammatory demyelination. In this study, the possible proliferative effect of vitamin E on human- induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neural progenitors (hiPS-NPs) and the underlying mechanisms were investigated in vitro. NPs were induced from iPS cells via 3 ste...

BACKGROUND Neuropsychiatric and neurological disorders frequently occur after brain insults associated with neuronal loss. Strategies aimed to facilitate neuronal renewal by promoting neurogenesis constitute a promising therapeutic option to treat neuronal death-associated disorders. In the adult brain, generation of new neurons occurs physiologically throughout the entire life controlled by ex...

The aim of this investigation was to characterize the proliferative precursor cells in the adult mouse hippocampal region. Given that a very large number of new hippocampal cells are generated over the lifetime of an animal, it is predicted that a neural stem cell is ultimately responsible for maintaining this genesis. Although it is generally accepted that a proliferative precursor resides wit...

The generation of neurons from neural stem cells requires large-scale changes in gene expression that are controlled to a large extent by proneural transcription factors, such as Ascl1. While recent studies have characterized the differentiation genes activated by proneural factors, less is known on the mechanisms that suppress progenitor cell identity. Here, we show that Ascl1 induces the tran...