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Stem cells: slow and steady wins the race

Nature Neuroscience volume 18, pages 613–614 (2015)Cite this article

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How are quiescent adult neural stem cells (NSCs) generated during development? A study now identifies a reserve population of p57-expressing, slowly dividing embryonic neural progenitors that later give rise to adult NSCs.

The researchers took advantage of GFP-tagged histone 2B (H2B) dilution analysis to label slowly dividing cells, an approach that was originally used in other stem cell systems8. H2B-GFP was expressed transiently in mouse embryos using a tetracycline-inducible promoter system at embryonic day (E) 9.5, and the presence of H2B-GFP label–retaining cells (LRCs) was examined later during development. Strikingly, LRCs were detected in the SEZ even at postnatal day 28, with this LRC population accounting for more than 70% of NSCs (as defined by cell morphology and marker expression) in the lateral wall of the SEZ. Moreover, most NSCs activated by injury (treatment with cytosine arabinoside) were also found to be LRCs derived from the slowly dividing embryonic NPCs. These observations demonstrate that the cells from which adult NSCs originate become quiescent between E13 and E15, much earlier than previously assumed, and are set aside from other, rapidly cycling NPCs during development7.

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Figure 1: The embryonic origin of adult NSCs in the SEZ.

Marina Corral Spence/Nature Publishing Group

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  1. Wieland B. Huttner is at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany.,

    Wieland B Huttner

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  1. Wieland B Huttner
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Correspondence to Wieland B Huttner.

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Huttner, W. Stem cells: slow and steady wins the race. Nat Neurosci 18, 613–614 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.4009

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