The development of stem cells -- not only which and where but also WHENMarch 20, 2003Yet another stride has been taken on the road to knowledge about the development of the nervous system. For the first time factors have been uncovered that decide when a cell is to develop into another cell. During the last ten years much progress has been made in finding out what determines how various types of nerve cells develop from a stem cell and where, above all in the brain, what cell is created. Now a research team, coordinated from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, has described various signal substances that also control the chronological order of the development of neural stem cells. The scientists have studied the development of motor and serotonergous neurons from the same type of original cell in mice. By studying developments over time, they have identified several so-called transcription factors, which decide when a certain cell is to be created. An unexpected discovery was that the same factors were previously known to regulate where a certain type of neural cell was to be created. "Discovering that these known proteins have new, hitherto unknown, roles is fascinating. The results show how tightly interwoven the time and spatial aspects of how nerve cells are," says Associate Professor Johan Ericson, Karolinska Institutet. The findings will be published in this week's issue of the journal Genes & Development. See www.genesdev.org under Advance Online Articles. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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