Individual adult human neurons display aneuploidy: detection by fluorescence in situ hybridization and single neuron PCR.
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.
Pack
Svetlana D
SD
Surgical Neurology Branch, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
Weil
Robert J
RJ
Vortmeyer
Alexander O
AO
Zeng
Weifen
W
Li
Jie
J
Okamoto
Hiroaki
H
Furuta
Makoto
M
Pak
Evgenia
E
Lubensky
Irina A
IA
Oldfield
Edward H
EH
Zhuang
Zhengping
Z
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