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An Enzyme- and Serum-free Neural Stem Cell Culture Model for EMT Investigation Suited for Drug Discovery
Published on: August 23, 2016
EGF regulates a complex pattern of gene expression and represses smooth muscle differentiation during the neurotypic
G Giannini1, E Alesse, L Di Marcotullio
1Department of Experimental Medicine and Pathology, University La Sapienza, Viale Regina Elena, 324, Rome, 00161, Italy.
Abstract:
EGF, known to sustain CNS neuronal progenitors, also promotes a neurotypic response in the thymic neural-crest-derived TC-1S cell line. We report here the use of TC-1S cells as a model to identify the genetic programs regulated during the neurotypic response induced by EGF and to isolate 23 EGF-responsive genes. Among them 5 represent novel cDNAs, while 18 are known genes, whose regulation by EGF is associated with the mitogenic or differentiating effects of the growth factor. The repression of smooth muscle alpha-actin and SM22alpha genes by EGF and their increase by TGFbeta suggest that the TC-1S line includes neural crest multipotent cells whose smooth muscle differentiation is repressed upon EGF treatment and stimulated by TGFbeta. Therefore, we identified a complex pattern of EGF-target genes and propose EGF as a novel signal able to recruit postmigratory neural-crest-derived cells along proliferation and cell lineage choice pathways.
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