Notch signaling between cerebellar granule cell progenitors

During cerebellar development, maternal granule cell progenitors (GCPs) divide to produce not only postmitotic granule cells (GCs) but also sister GCPs. However, molecular machinery to proportionally produce distinct sister cell types from seemingly uniform GCPs is still elusive. Here we report Notch signaling makes a difference among GCPs, leading to their proportional differentiation. P7 cerebella cells were extrated using percoll density gradient centrifugation and further captured via the C1 Fluidigm systems with 96-well chips在小脑发育过程中，母源性颗粒细胞前体（granule cell progenitors, GCPs）分裂时不仅会产生有丝分裂后状态的颗粒细胞（granule cells, GCs），还可生成姊妹GCPs。然而，从看似均一的GCPs中按比例生成不同姊妹细胞类型的分子机制仍未明确。本研究发现，Notch信号通路（Notch signaling）可在GCPs群体中造成异质性差异，进而介导其按比例分化。本实验采用Percoll密度梯度离心法提取出生后第7天（P7）的小脑细胞，并进一步通过搭载96孔芯片的C1 Fluidigm系统完成细胞捕获。