During the last decade,increasing evidence suggested that bone marrow stromal cells(MSCs) have the potential to differentiate into neural lineages.Many studies have reported that MSCs showed morphological changes and expressed a limited number of neural proteins under experimental conditions.However,no proteomic studies on MSCs differentiated into Schwann cell-like cells have been reported.In this study,we isolated MSCs from adult Sprague-Dawley rat femur and tibia bone marrows and induced the cells in vitro under specific conditions.By using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis(2-DE),we compared the protein profiles of MSCs before and after induced differentiation.We obtained 792 protein spots in the protein profile by 2-DE,and found that 74 spots changed significantly before and after the differentiation using PDQuest software,with 43 up-regulated and 31 down-regulated.We analyzed these 74 spots by a matrix assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry(MALDI-TOF-MS) and by database searching,and found that they could be grouped into various classes,including cytoskeleton and structure proteins,growth factors,metabolic proteins,chaperone proteins,receptor proteins,cell cycle proteins,calcium binding proteins,and other proteins.These proteins also include neural and glial proteins,such as BDNF,CNTF and GFAP.The results may provide valuable proteomic information about the differentiation of MSCs into Schwann cell-like cells.
LI WenTing1,SUN HuaLin2,XU ZengLu1,DING Fei2 & GU XiaoSong2 1 Department of Anatomy,Histology and Embryology,Peking Union Medical College,Institute of Basic Medical Science,Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences,Beijing 100005,China
To find a promising alternative to neurons or schwann cells (SCs) for peripheral nerve repair applications,this study sought to isolate stem cells from fetal rat dorsal root ganglion (DRG) explants.Molecular expression analysis confirmed neural stem cell characteristics of DRG-derived neurospheres in terms of expressing neural stem cell-specific genes and a set of well-defined genes related to stem cell niches and glial fate decision.Under the influence of neurotrophic factors,bFGF and NGF,the neurospheres gave rise to neurofilament-expressing neurons and S100-expressing Schwann cell-like cells by different pathways.This study suggests that a subpopulation of stem cells that reside in DRGs is the progenitor of neurons and glia,which could directly induce the differentiation toward neurons,or SCs.
