Migration Guidance of Human iPSC-derived Neurons by a Two-dimensional Patterning

Abstract

The layered structure in the cerebral cortex has an important role in expressing brain function and is formed by cell migration during embryogenesis. However, it is not clear how neurons migrate and form layers orderly because an appropriate culture method is yet to be developed for evaluating cell migration. Our purpose is to develop an experimental system to control directions of human-neuronal migration in two-dimensional culture in order to understand the mechanism of neuronal migration during corticogenesis. Here, we made a stripe pattern of laminin on culture dishes, and cultured human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived neural cells on the pattern. iPSC-derived neural stem cells and neurons extended their fibers along the pattern. Then, migration of neural cells on the pattern was traced with time-lapse imaging. As a result, the migration length along the pattern was significantly longer than that orthogonal to, suggesting that the laminin pattern guides effectively neural-cell migration. Our method using the laminin pattern should be appropriate for controlling and observing human-neural-cell migration, and moreover, applicable to the study of revealing the mechanism of the migration.