Differentiation prevents assessment of neural stem cell pluripotency after blastocyst injection
Authors
Greco, BeatriceLow, Hoi Pang
Johnson, Eric C.
Salmonsen, Rebecca
Gallant, Judith
Jones, Stephen N.
Ross, Alonzo H.
Recht, Lawrence D.
UMass Chan Affiliations
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular PharmacologyDepartment of Cell Biology
Department of Neurology
Document Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
2004-07-28Keywords
AnimalsBase Sequence
Blastocyst
Cell Differentiation
DNA Primers
Female
Fetal Tissue Transplantation
Genes, Reporter
Genetic Markers
Green Fluorescent Proteins
Heterozygote
Mice
Mice, Inbred C57BL
Mice, Transgenic
Nervous System
Pregnancy
Stem Cells
Transplantation Chimera
Life Sciences
Medicine and Health Sciences
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Earlier studies reported that neural stem (NS) cells injected into blastocysts appeared to be pluripotent, differentiating into cells of all three germ layers. In this study, we followed in vitro green fluorescent protein (GFP)-labeled NS and embryonic stem (ES) cells injected into blastocysts. Forty-eight hours after injection, significantly fewer blastocysts contained GFP-NS cells than GFP-ES cells. By 96 hours, very few GFP-NS cells remained in blastocysts compared with ES cells. Moreover, 48 hours after injection, GFP-NS cells in blastocysts extended long cellular processes, ceased expressing the NS cell marker nestin, and instead expressed the astrocytic marker glial fibrillary acidic protein. GFP-ES cells in blastocysts remained morphologically undifferentiated, continuing to express the pluripotent marker stage-specific embryonic antigen-1. Selecting cells from the NS cell population that preferentially formed neurospheres for injection into blastocysts resulted in identical results. Consistent with this in vitro behavior, none of almost 80 mice resulting from NS cell-injected blastocysts replaced into recipient mothers were chimeric. These results strongly support the idea that NS cells cannot participate in chimera formation because of their rapid differentiation into glia-like cells. Thus, these results raise doubts concerning the pluripotency properties of NS cells.Source
Stem Cells. 2004;22(4):600-8.
DOI
10.1634/stemcells.22-4-600Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/38804PubMed ID
15277705Related Resources
ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1634/stemcells.22-4-600