抄録
Microglia are thought to play important functional roles in the brain in both physiological and pathological states, and considered the only cell population of mesodermal origin in the brain, although their role is not fully understood. We recently published a novel role for microglia as multipotential stem cells to give rise to neurons, astorocytes or oligodendrocytes in serum-free medium followed by culture in the presence of high concentration serum. However, we could not observe neuroectodermal differentiation from macrophage cultured in the same condition of microglia (unpublished data). These results raise the possibility that the microglia-specific genes are expressed and functioned during differentiation into neuroectodermal cells. Therefore, we considered that molecular cloning of the differentiation-specific factors would provide a clue to understanding the unrevealed molecular mechanisms, which underlie complex signaling pathways of neuroectodermal differentiation from microglia. For this purpus, we performed a subtraction experiment using mRNA isolated from microglia and macrophage, cultured in the differentiated condition as described above. We detected 3 novel genes and some interest genes involved in neural functions. We now characterize their roles in neuroectodermal differentiation of microglia, and continue to screen other genes by this method. [Jpn J Physiol 54 Suppl:S82 (2004)]
