title: E-Cadherin regulates neural stem cell self-renewal.
abstract: E-Cadherin, a cell adhesion protein, has been shown to take part in the compartmentalization, proliferation, survival, and differentiation of cells. E-Cadherin is expressed in the adult and embryonic forebrain germinal zones in vivo, and in clonal colonies of cells derived from these regions and grown in vitro. Mice carrying E-Cadherin floxed genes crossed to mice expressing Cre under the Nestin promoter demonstrate defects in the self-renewal of neural stem cells both in vivo and in vitro. The functional role of E-Cadherin is further demonstrated using adhesion-blocking antibodies in vitro, which specifically target cadherin extracellular adhesive domains. Adult neural stem cell colonies decrease in the presence of E-Cadherin antibodies in a dosage-dependent manner, in contrast to P-Cadherin antibody. On overexpression of normal E-Cadherin and a mutated E-Cadherin, containing no intracellular binding domain, an increased number of clonal adult neural stem cell colonies are observed. These data suggest it is specifically E-Cadherin adhesion that is responsible for these self-renewal effects. These data show the importance of E-Cadherin in the neural stem cell niche and suggest E-Cadherin regulates the number of these cells.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. phillip.karpowicz@utoronto.ca
authors.forename: Phillip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Karpowicz
authors.forename: Sandrine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Willaime-Morawek
authors.forename: Laurent
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Balenci
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: DeVeale
authors.forename: Tomoyuki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Inoue
authors.forename: Derek
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: van der Kooy