Transcriptional profiling of proliferating and differentiating SPC04 human neural stem cell line

Here we used microarray expression profiling to characterise global changes in gene expression during stages of proliferation and differentiation of human neural stem cells Comparing gene expression profiles of undifferentiated cells with pre-differentiated cells, or cells that have been induced to differentiate for 3 or 7 days, led to identification of ~3540 genes that were differentially expressed between these stages, with most of the changes in gene expression occurring 7 days after differentiation. Gene ontology clustering analyses indicated enrichment of genes downregulated at differentiation day 7 for genes involved in cell cycle and DNA metabolic processes. Upregulated genes were mainly enriched for genes involved in cell adhesion, synaptic transmission, neuron morphogenesis and differentiation and synapse formation and organization (Desrivières et al. Mol Psychiatry. 2014 Feb 11. doi: 10.1038/mp.2013.197). Total RNA obtained from triplicate experiments during which SPC04 cells that had been pre-differentiated for 2 days, or further subjected to 3 or 7 days of differentiation compared to control undifferentiated (i.e., proliferating) SPC04 cells.