Abstract
Human embryonic stem cells (human ES cells) are pluripotent and self-renewing cells that can be isolated from the inner cell mass at the blastocyst stage. Human ES cells differentiate into specific cell lineages according to the expression of related genes. During neural development, specific gene expressions induced human ES cells some morphological changes. We used suppression subtractive hybridization to identify genes which shows altered expression during neural differentiation from human ES cells. We identified 90 genes as downregulated and 64 genes as upregulated in neural precursor (NP) cells derived from human ES cells compared with human ES cells. To obtain further information about differentiation, we performed expression profiling of subtracted genes between human ES cells and NP cells. Of the subtracted genes in human ES cells, the 19 genes showed decreased expression in NP cells. Meanwhile, of the subtracted genes in NP cells, the 20 genes were upregulated. Among them, COPZ1, CPSF6, MATR3 and TOMD3 were specific gene expressions that they significantly expressed up and down-regulation during neural development derived from ES cells. These genes have not previously been associated with neural differentiation, but they may be potentially participated in neurogenesis.
Expression Profiles of Subtracted Genes During Neural Differentiation from Human Embryonic Stem Cells using Suppression Subtractive Hybridization