Secondary NS from Cortex and spinal cord

Neural stem cells (NSCs) can be isolated from different regions of the central nervous system. There has been controversy whether regional differences amongst stem and progenitor cells are cell intrinsic and whether these differences are maintained during expansion in culture. The identification of inherent regional differences has important implications for the use of these cells in neural repair. Here, we compared neural stem cells derived from the spinal cord and embryonic cortex. We found that while cultured cortical and spinal cord derived neural stem cells respond similarly to mitogens and are equally neuronogenic, they retain and maintain through multiple passages gene expression patterns indicative of the region from which they were isolated. Further microarray analysis identified 229 genes that were differentially expressed between cortical and spinal cord derived neurospheres. Keywords: stem cell comparison Cortex and and spinal cords were isolated from embryonic day 14 cd1 mice and cultured ad neurospheres for 2 passages in EGF and bFGF. 3 independent sets of cultures serve as biological replicates with a dye flip control for each hybridization, for a total of 6 arrays.

神经干细胞（Neural stem cells, NSCs）可从中枢神经系统的不同区域分离获得。目前学界对于干细胞与祖细胞的区域差异是否为细胞固有特性，以及此类差异在体外培养扩增过程中是否得以维持，仍存在争议。对固有区域差异的鉴定，对于此类细胞在神经修复中的应用具有重要意义。
本研究对源自脊髓与胚胎大脑皮层的神经干细胞开展了比较分析。结果显示，尽管体外培养的皮层来源与脊髓来源神经干细胞对丝裂原的响应一致，且神经元分化能力相当，但二者在历经多次传代后，仍保留并维持着与其来源区域对应的基因表达谱特征。进一步的基因芯片微阵列（microarray）分析表明，皮层来源与脊髓来源的神经球（neurospheres）之间存在229个差异表达基因。
关键词：干细胞比较
本研究从胚胎第14天的CD1小鼠体内分离皮层与脊髓组织，将其培养为神经球，在表皮生长因子（EGF）与碱性成纤维细胞生长因子（bFGF）中传代2次。本实验设置3组独立培养物作为生物学重复，每次杂交实验均配备染料翻转对照，最终共计使用6张基因芯片阵列。