Defining a developmental path to neural fate by global expression profiling of mouse embryonic stem cells and adult neural stem/progenitor cells

¹ Developmental Genomics and Aging Section, Laboratory of Genetics, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Baltimore, Maryland
² Institute for Stem Cell Research, Ospedale San Raffaele, Milan, Italy

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: kom{at} mail.nih.gov.

	Abstract

To understand global features of gene expression changes during in vitro neural differentiation, we carried out the microarray analysis of ES, EC, and adult neural stem/progenitor (NS) cells. Expression profiling of ES cells during differentiation in monolayer culture revealed three distinctive phases: undifferentiated ES cells, primitive ectoderm-like cells, and neural progenitor cells. Principal component (PC) analysis revealed that these cells were aligned on PC1 over the course of 6 days. This PC1 represents 4,000 genes, whose expression increased with neural commitment/differentiation. Furthermore, neural stem/progenitor cells derived from adult brain and their differentiated cells were positioned along this PC axis further away from undifferentiated ES cells than ES-derived neural progenitors. We suggest that this PC1 define a path to neural fate, providing a scale for the degree of commitment/differentiation.