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Nature Biotechnology (30 January 2005) | doi:10.1038/nbt1063

Specification of motoneurons from human embryonic stem cells

Xue-Jun Li , Zhong-Wei Du , Ewa D Zarnowska , Matthew Pankratz , Lauren O Hansen , Robert A Pearce & Su-Chun Zhang

An understanding of how mammalian stem cells produce specific neuronal subtypes remains elusive. Here we show that human embryonic stem cells generated early neuroectodermal cells, which organized into rosettes and expressed Pax6 but not Sox1, and then late neuroectodermal cells, which formed neural tube–like structures and expressed both Pax6 and Sox1.