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Published on: September 21, 2014
Long interspersed nuclear elements safeguard neural progenitors from precocious differentiation
Tomohisa Toda1, Tracy A Bedrosian2, Simon T Schafer3
1Laboratory of Genetics, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA; Laboratory of Neural Epigenomics, Institute of Medical Physics and Micro-tissue Engineering, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91054 Erlangen, Germany; Nuclear Architecture in Neural Plasticity and Aging Laboratory, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, 01307 Dresden, Germany.
Abstract:
Long interspersed nuclear element-1 (L1 or LINE-1) is a highly abundant mobile genetic element in both humans and mice, comprising almost 20% of each genome. L1s are silenced by several mechanisms, as their uncontrolled expression has the potential to induce genomic instability. However, L1s are paradoxically expressed at high levels in differentiating neural progenitor cells. Using in vitro and in vivo techniques to modulate L1 expression, we report that L1s play a critical role in both human and mouse brain development by regulating the rate of neural differentiation in a reverse-transcription-independent manner.
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