Host: The Japanese Pharmacological Society, The Japanese Society of Clinical Pharmacology
Name : WCP2018 (18th World Congress of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology)
Location : Kyoto
Date : July 01, 2018 - July 06, 2018
During brain development, neural stem cells change their competency, producing neurons first and glial cells later. It is therefore very important to maintain neural stem cells until the final stage of development to generate a full diversity of cell types. We previously found that fate determination factors such as Hes1 and Ascl1/Mash1 are expressed in an oscillatory manner in neural stem cells but exhibit sustained expression during cell differentiation. We also showed by optogenetic approach that sustained expression of Ascl1/Mash1 promotes neuronal differentiation, whereas oscillatory expression of Ascl1/Mash1 activates proliferation of neural stem cells. Furthermore, inactivation of Ascl1/Mash1 inhibits proliferation of neural stem cells, suggesting that Ascl1/Mash1 oscillations are important for proliferation of neural stem cells. In the adult brain, neural stem cells are mostly quiescent, and we found that Hes1 expression is sustained, while Ascl1/Mash1 expression is repressed in those cells. Furthermore, optogenetic induction of Ascl1/Mash1 oscillations activated quiescent neural stem cells to enter cell cycle. These results suggest that the oscillatory control of Ascl1/Mash1 may be important for the active state of neural stem cells.
