Gene expression analysis of midbrain dopamine progenitors in embryonic mouse

To improve the standardization of cell therapies for Parkinson’s disease, methods for the selection and isolation of midbrain dopaminergic progenitors for transplantation are required. To facilitate this we established an expression profile for genes selectively expressed on transplantable midbrain dopaminergic progenitors using microarray analysis. Expression of GFP in the ventral mesencephalon of embryonic E12.5 Ngn2-GFP mice identifies a distinct sub-population of cells containing virtually all of the midbrain dopaminergic progenitors. Gene expression profiles from 3 biological replicates of FACS isolated GFP-positive cells from mouse Ngn2-GFP ventral mesencephalon were generated using microarrays. To reduce the likelihood of identifying transcripts from non-dopaminergic progenitors, 3 biological replicates of FACS isolated GFP-negative cells from mouse Lmx1a-GFP ventral mesencephalon (definitively non-dopaminergic) were used as a reference population.