Gene expression data from mouse ES cell-derived primitive NSCs and definitive NSCs

Primitive neural stem cells (NSCs) could be derived from pluripotent mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells, and then differentiate into definitive-type neural stem cells which resemble NSCs obtained from the central nervous system. Hence, primitive NSCs define an early stage of neural induction and provide a model to understand the mechanism that controls initial neural commitment. In this study, we performed microarray assay to analyze the global transcriptional profiles in mouse ES cell-derived primitive and definitive NSCs and to depict the molecular changes during the multi-staged neural differentiation process. Primitive NSCs derived directly from ESCs in Lif (p-NSC_L), primitive NSCs that were sub-cultured in the presence of Lif and FGF (p-NSC_LF), as well as definitive NSCs derived from primitive NSCs in medium containing FGF and EGF, were collected for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays. Mouse ESCs and NSCs obtained from mouse embryonic brain (E11.5) were included for controls. For each cell type, we collected two biological replicate samples for microarray analysis.