生物谷报道：德国科学家8月20日宣布，应用特殊的调节蛋白，可使大脑星形胶质细胞形成为功能性神经细胞，从而在因受伤或疾病造成的受损脑细胞的替代治疗方面取得重要进展。
由国家环境与健康研究中心干细胞研究所和慕尼黑大学Magdalena Götz教授领衔的研究小组发现，应用单一调节蛋白即可使胶质细胞形成新的功能性神经细胞。通过在定时显微镜下对这一转变过程进行时实观察，他们发现胶质细胞在呈现一般的神经细胞形状之前，需要几天的程序调整时间，而新生的神经细胞还具有一般神经细胞典型的电生理特性。
两年前，该研究小组已经证实胶质细胞在发育过程中具有干细胞功能，即意味着它们可分化为功能性神经细胞，但在发育后期胶质细胞丧失了这一功能。为了能够逆转这一发育过程，该研究小组对发育过程中胶质细胞形成神经细胞所必需的调节分子进行了研究。他们将新生大脑中的这些调节蛋白加入胶质细胞，证实调节蛋白确实可开启神经蛋白的表达。
Figure 1. Ngn2 and Mash1 can reprogram astroglial cells to adopt a neuronal fate. a, Examples of astroglia transduced with a vector only encoding GFP (CMMP) 12 d after infection. Left, GFP immunoreactivity; right, TuJ1 immunoreactivity. b, Example of Mash1-transduced cell also positive for TUJ1 12 d after infection. c, Example of Ngn2-transduced cell double-positive for TUJ1 12 d after infection. d, Summary of three independent experiments in which the number of clones consisting of TuJ1-positive (neuronal), TuJ1-positive as well as -negative (mixed), and only TuJ1-negative (non-neuronal) cells is given as a percentage of all clones analyzed. Cells were fixed 12 d after infection and analyzed in three different experimental batches with >100 cells counted in each batch. For statistical analysis, a nonparametric ANOVA was used with a Dunn's post hoc analysis.
原文出处：
8 Aug 2007; 27 (32)
Benedikt Berninger, Marcos R. Costa, Ursula Koch, Timm Schroeder, Bernd Sutor, Benedikt Grothe, and Magdalena Götz
Functional Properties of Neurons Derived from In Vitro Reprogrammed Postnatal Astroglia
J. Neurosci. 2007 27: 8654-8664; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1615-07.2007 [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] [Supplemental Data]
作者简介：
Dr. Benedikt Berninger
Ludwig Maximilians-University of Munich
Department of Physiological Genomics
Research Cooperation:
· FORNEUROCELL
(Position: Head of Research Division)
Projects:
· Entwicklung eines Differenzierungsverfahrens für humane Astrozyten in funktionelle Neurone
(Research Cooperation: FORNEUROCELL)
URL:
http://physinst.web.med.uni-muenchen.de/genomic.htm
