title: Individual adult human neurons display aneuploidy: detection by fluorescence in situ hybridization and single neuron PCR.
abstract: Neurons, once committed, exit the cell cycle and undergo maturation that promote specialized activity and are believed to operate upon a stable genome. We used fluorescence in situ hybridization, selective cell microdissection, and loss of heterozygosity analysis to assess degree of aneuploidy in patients with a neurodegenerative disease and in normal controls. We found that aneuploidy occurs in approximately 40% of mature, adult human neurons in health or disease and may be a physiological mechanism that maintains neuronal fate and function; it does not appear to be an unstable state. The fact that neuronal stem cells can be identified in adult humans and that somatic mosaicism may be found in neuronal precursor cells deserves further investigation before using adult neural stem cells to treat human disease.
authors.affiliation: Surgical Neurology Branch, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
authors.forename: Svetlana D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Pack
authors.forename: Robert J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Weil
authors.forename: Alexander O
authors.initials: AO
authors.lastname: Vortmeyer
authors.forename: Weifen
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Hiroaki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Okamoto
authors.forename: Makoto
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Furuta
authors.forename: Evgenia
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Pak
authors.forename: Irina A
authors.initials: IA
authors.lastname: Lubensky
authors.forename: Edward H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Oldfield
authors.forename: Zhengping
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhuang
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000782:Aneuploidy; D006801:Humans; D017404:In Situ Hybridization, Fluorescence; D019656:Loss of Heterozygosity; D008875:Middle Aged; D009474:Neurons / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000473:pathology*; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction