Erythroid-like cells from neural stem cells injected into blastocysts.
OBJECTIVE
In contrast to embryonic stem (ES) cells, which are able to give rise to all cell types of the body, somatic stem cells have been thought to be more limited in their differentiation potential in that they are committed to generate only cells of their tissue of origin. Unexpectedly, some recent data suggest that somatic stem cells isolated from one tissue can also generate cells of heterologous tissues and organs, implying that somatic stem cells have a greater potential for differentiation.


METHODS
To explore further the developmental potential of murine neural stem cells (NSCs) we injected cultured NSCs as neurospheres into preimplantation blastocysts and determined the seeding by donor cells in tissues of developing chimeric fetal and adult animals.


RESULTS
We frequently detected progeny of injected NSCs both in embryos and in adult animals. In embryos we observed transient seeding of donor cells to hematopoietic tissues and generation of NSC-derived cells that express globin genes and an erythroid-specific cell-surface marker. In adults progeny of NSCs were mostly detected in neural tissues. The observed low level of chimerism of wild-type NSCs was increased if we injected stem cells expressing a bcl-2 transgene, without changing the seeding pattern.


CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that cultured NSCs, following their injection into blastocysts, generate at mid-gestation erythroid-like cells but later, in adult chimeric mice, engraftment mainly persisted in neural tissues.
Harder
Friedrich
F
Institute of Medical Radiation and Cell Research (MSZ), University of Würzburg, Germany.
Kirchhof
Nicole
N
Petrovic
Suzana
S
Wiese
Stefan
S
Müller
Albrecht M
AM
D000818:Animals; D001755:Blastocyst / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000276:immunology*; D005314:Embryonic and Fetal Development; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D006412:Hematopoietic Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology*; D008099:Liver / Q000166:cytology / Q000196:embryology; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D019253:Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-bcl-2 / Q000235:genetics; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D033581:Stem Cell Transplantation; D013234:Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology*; D018183:Transplantation Chimera
D019253:Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-bcl-2