Fig. 1. Neural stem cells isolated from different regions of the E14.5 mouse brain display self-renewal and neuronal/glial multipotentiality characteristics in vitro. (A) Isolation of FGF2-responsive neural stem cells from the cortical (CTX), ganglionic eminence (GE) and midbrain/rostral hindbrain (MB/rHB) germinal zones (n=12 embryos per group). The ability to form primary sphere colonies after 7 days of culture was examined. The self-renewal capacity of the original colony-forming neural stem cells, primary CTX, GE and MB/rHB (n=4 for each group) was also examined after mechanical dissociation and re-culture (see Materials and Methods for details). The numbers of secondary colonies from each group was quantified after 7 days in culture. (B) Immunolabeling for neurons (anti-MAP2+), astrocytes (anti-GFAP+) and oligodendrocytes (anti-O4+) derived from single neural stem cell colonies cultured for 7 days in serum-free medium and subsequently allowed to differentiate for a further 7 days on an artificial extracellular matrix substrate in medium containing 1% FBS. Scale bar, 20 µm.
