Notch Protein Key in Neural Cells

Notch Protein Key in Neural Cells

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have discovered that activating the Notch protein in embryonic stem cells causes most of them to differentiate into neural cells. According to the press release (includes a nice image), the effect is observed in both human and mouse cells and only requires the presence of Notch activating signals in the stem cell culture. Once Notch is activated in one stem cell, the stem cell communicates with its neighbors and Notch is activated in them as well. Up to 90% of the stem cells in which Notch was activated became neural cells. The researchers want to move on to see what Notch is blocking in the stem cells so that they can start to control differentiation into other types of cells.

The study is in PLoS Biology, which is an open-access non-profit journal. The press release has a link to the article. PloS stands for Public Library of Science, and the journals are peer-reviewed. I’d like to encourage people to go to the site and look around in the interest of supporting open access to information. Open source may not have the prestige of established journals (in any field, not just the sciences) but I think it is crucial to the evolution of knowledge and knowledge paradigms.

This seems like an important finding to me, by the way, since there has been so much difficulty in producing or working with neural cells. It would be interesting to see what happens if Notch is activated in different kinds of adult stem cells.