Xue Y, Ouyang K, Huang J, Zhou Y, Ouyang H, Li H, Wang G, Wu Q, Wei C, Bi Y, Jiang L, Cai Z, Sun H, Zhang K, Zhang Y, Chen J, Fu XD. Direct Conversion of Fibroblasts to Neurons by Reprogramming PTB-Regulated MicroRNA Circuits. Cell. 2013 Jan 9; PubMed.
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Child Health Institute of New Jersey
This is a very exciting paper and represents an important advance in the trans-differentiation field. This offers an alternative and simpler method for generating neuronal cells from other cell lineages. The authors' finding that suppression of PTB expression has neurogenic effects in a few cell lines, including mouse embryonic fibroblasts, is unexpected. The genomic mechanism data are comprehensive and have possibly clarified previously reported neurogenic effects of miR-124 and miR-9/9* (Yoo et al., 2011). It is remarkable to see that PTB knockdown can upregulate miR-124 and also other pro-neuronal transcription factors. It will be interesting to extend the finding into human primary fibroblasts and subtype and/or lineage specification of neuronal cells or other cell types.
References:
Yoo AS, Sun AX, Li L, Shcheglovitov A, Portmann T, Li Y, Lee-Messer C, Dolmetsch RE, Tsien RW, Crabtree GR. MicroRNA-mediated conversion of human fibroblasts to neurons. Nature. 2011 Aug 11;476(7359):228-31. PubMed.
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