The Differences of Transdifferentiation Induced by Small Molecules and Gene Expression between Mouse Astrocytes from Different Brain Regions
ZENG Peng, HUA Qiuhong, SHI Changjie, ZHANG Ru*
The current study aimed to compare the neuronal transdifferentiation ability induced by small molecules of astrocytes derived from different mouse brain regions, and analyze the differentially expressed genes in these astrocytes by transcriptome sequencing. Astrocytes isolated from the cortex and hippocampus of neonatal mice were induced into neuronal transdifferentiation by a small molecule cocktail, VCR. The morphological changes of cells and ratio of neurons in total cells in the process of transdifferentiation were investigated by immunofluorescence staining. Then transcriptome sequencing was carried out to compare the differences in gene expression between the two types of astrocytes. The sequencing results were further verified by qPCR and analyzed by GO analysis. The results showed that the transdifferentiation efficiency of cortical astrocytes was significantly higher than that of hippocampal astrocytes. The transcriptome sequencing results revealed that 12 658 genes were differentially expressed between the two kinds of astrocytes. GO analysis showed that genes highly expressed in cortical astrocytes were mainly involved in the process of cell division. It is speculated that some key genes, such as GAD2, EYA2, GSX2, INSM1 and GNG3, significantly highly expressed in cortical astrocytes might be related to transdifferentiation. This study provides a reference for further mechanism study of regional specific astrocytes-to-neuron
conversion.
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