Neural stem cells: a contemporary dual tool for disease modeling and therapeutics Flashcards
What is neural stem cell?
Neural stem cells, or NSCs, are undifferentiated cells defined by their capacity for self-renewal and multipotency.
What abilities underlies in the symmetric/asymetric division of neural stem cells?
The symmetric division of neural stem cells underlies their ability to self-renew and serve to maintain the neural stem cell population.
In contrast, asymmetric mitosis produces one neural stem cells and one neural progenitor cells, daughter cells with differentiation capacity restricted to neuronal or glial lineages.
What is meant by totipotent?
Totipotent, meaning it has the potential to give rise to any and all human cells, such as brain, liver, blood or heart cells. It can even give rise to an entire functional organism. The first few cell divisions in embryonic development produce more totipotent cells. After four days of embryonic cell division, the cells begin to specialise into pluripotent stem cells.
What is meant by pluripotent?
Pluripotent stem cells are like totipotent stem cells in that they can give rise to all tissue types, but unlike totipotent stem cells, they cannot give rise to an entire organism.
What is meant by multipotent?
Multipotent stem cells are cells that have the capacity to self-renew by dividing and developing into multiple specialised cell types present in a specific tissue or organ. Most adult stem cells are multipotent stem cells. For example, multipotent blood stem cells can develop into red blood cells, white blood cells or platelets
Positional information allows NSCs to differentially (3)… to cover the needs along the anterior, posterior, dorsal ventral axis of the neural tube.
- Proliferate
- Migrate
- Differentiate
What is another name for neural stem cells from the neural tube that are commonly named?
Neuroepithelial cells, which are the most primitive form of neural stem cells.
How different are the neuroepithelial cells in the cortex vs spinal cord and striatum?
After the development ends which areas are the stem cells restricted?
Neural stem cell populations are very rare and restricted to the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus and the subventricular zone of the lateral ventricle.
Why identifying embryonic neural stem cells, remains very controversial?
Because, there is a lack of very specific neural stem cell markers, which make it very difficult to demonstrate long-term self-renewal and multipotency in vivo.
Also, the identity of neural stem cells could change spatially, so according to neural tube position, and temporally, so according to developmental age
Why there is a need for combination of positive and negative markers to identify NSCs?
Because there’s no exclusive antigen that has been identified so far to label neural stem cells.
you will come upon articles that are going a step further: as opposed to using antibody markers, they might use single cell RNA extraction for neural stem cell gene expression
Why we use BrdU and search for dividing cells?
One of the property of neural stem cells is to divide, or self-renew, so a possible way to identify them would also be to label for dividing cells.
One way to identify dividing cells, is to inject systemically bromodeoxyuridine or BrdU, which is an analogue of thymidine, that will intercalate in the DNA as it replicates.
Explain the picture
We saw that one of the property of neural stem cells is to divide, or self-renew, so a possible way to identify them would also be to label for dividing cells. One way to identify dividing cells, is to inject systemically bromodeoxyuridine or BrdU, which is an analogue of thymidine, that will intercalate in the DNA as it replicates.
What is another way apart from BrdU labeling to identify dividing cells?
retrovirus. In that case, this retrovirus has been engineered to express GFP, green fluorescent protein, and here, again, only cells dividing will be integrating the retrovirus. So, in that case, the retrovirus has been injected locally in the hippocampus, and dividing cells have been integrating the retrovirus, and the green cells here, shown again in the dentate gyrus in the molecular layer, are cells that have been just dividing.
What is the difference between 2 methods of generating NSCs from multipotent and differentiated cells?
How stem cells are used as a tool in research?
How stem cells are used as a tool for regenerative technology?
What are the advantages/disadvantages of cell therapy from blastocyst donor?
What are the advantages/disadvantages of cell therapy from somatic adult cells?
What are the advantages/disadvantages of cell therapy from adult brain?
What are the advantages/disadvantages of cell therapy from in vivo mobilisation of endogenous brain stem cells with growth factors?
