Nestin is a critical prosurvival factor in neural stem/progenitor cells
作者单位：Howard Hughes Medical InstituteDepartment of Human GeneticsUniversity of ChicagoChicago IL 60637USA Center for Stem Cell Biology and Tissue EngineeringSun Yat-sen University
会议名称：《中国神经科学学会第四次会员代表大会暨第八届全国学术会议》
会议日期：2009年
学科分类：0710[理学-生物学] 07[理学] 071006[理学-神经生物学]
关 键 词：nestin intermediate filament apoptosis neural stem cells neural progenitor cells vimentin
摘 要：正The intermediate filament protein,nestin,is a widely employed marker of multipotent neural stem/progenitor cells（NSCs）.Recent in vitro studies have implicated nestin in a number of cellular processes,but there is no evidence yet on its in vivo function.Here,we report the construction and functional characterization of Nestin knockout mice.We found mat these mice show embryonic lethality,with neuroepithelia of the developing neural tube exhibiting significantly increased apoptosis.Consistent with this in vivo observation,NSC cultures derived from knockout embryos show dramatically elevated apoptosis but no defects in proliferation or differentiation.Unexpectedly,nestin deficiency has no deflectable effect on the integrity of the cytoskeleton.Furthermore,the knockout of vimentin,while abolishing nestin’s ability to polymerize into intermediate filaments in NSCs,does not lead to any apoptotic phenotype.These data demonstrate that nestin is a critical prosurvival factor in NSCs,and that nestin’s prosurvival function is surprisingly uncoupled from its structural involvement in the cytoskeleton.