Transcription profiling of adult and fetal human neuroprogenitors identifies divergent paths to maintain the neuroprogenitor cell state

¹ Department of Neurology, Technical University of Dresden, Dresden, Germany
² Department of Clinical Genetics, Technical University of Dresden, Dresden, Germany
³ Department of Neurology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
⁴ Department of Neurology, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany
⁵ Department of Neurosurgery, Technical University of Dresden, Dresden, Germany
⁶ Department of Neurosurgery, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany
⁷ Division for Biochemistry of Joint and Connective Tissue Diseases, Department of Orthopaedics, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: alexander.storch{at}neuro.med.tu-dresden.de.

	Abstract

Global gene expression profiling was performed using RNA from adult human hippocampus-derived neuroprogenitor cells (NPCs) and multipotent frontal cortical fetal NPCs in comparison to adult human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) as a multipotent adult stem cell control, and adult human hippocampal tissue, to define a gene expression pattern which is specific for human NPCs. The results were compared with data from various databases. Hierarchical cluster analysis of all neuroectodermal cell/tissue types revealed a strong relationship of adult hippocampal NPCs with various white matter tissues, while fetal NPCs strongly correlate with fetal brain tissue. However, adult and fetal NPCs share the expression of a variety of genes known to be related to signal transduction, cell metabolism and neuroectodermal tissue. In contrast, adult NPCs and hMSCs overlap in the expression of genes mainly involved in extracellular matrix biology. We present for the first time a detailed transcriptome analysis of human adult NPCs suggesting a relationship between hippocampal NPCs and white matter-derived precursor cells. We further provide a framework for standardized comparative gene expression analysis of human brain-derived NPCs with other stem cell populations or differentiated tissues.