Robust induction of neural crest cells to derive peripheral sensory neurons from human induced pluripotent stem cells
Robust induction of neural crest cells to derive peripheral sensory neurons from human induced pluripotent stem cells
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60036-z#citeas – article
1) What is the neural crest? What happens to the neural crest in development? If it is not the source of central nervous system (CNS) cells, what is?
2) Induced pluripotent stem cells made to differentiate are obviously found in a culture dish, not in the neural crest of a 28-day embryo. How then do the authors establish that the cells are neural crest cells? What are some of the specific markers that identify such cells?
3) What type(s) of cells are involved in the sensation of itching? What are some of the specific signaling molecules and their receptors that contribute to itching?
4) In Figure 1, what are
APC
Alexa Fluor 488
IgG
IgM
p75
HNK1
5) In figure 3, cells are stained with antibodies to NANOG or OCT3/4, as well as DAPI. What’s the point of looking for NANOG and OCT3/4?
What is DAPI, and what does its appearance in the cells tell you about the cells? Why are the cells used permeable to DAPI?
6) What is nociception? Why use that term instead of something simpler? What method(s) do the authors use to stimulate nociception? How do they measure/detect it? I’m mainly talking about figure 5 here.
7) Where do histamine, capsaicin, and allyl isothiocyanate come from normally? What are they capable of inducing at a cellular level?
8) Interleukins have roles other than mediating nociception. What do IL-31 and IL-4 do aside from making you itchy?
9) Bone morphogenic protein (BMP) maintains the pluripotent state of stem cells, blocking neural differentiation.
How does Noggin interact with this system?
10) The cells most desired by the authors of this paper are probably? ( MCQ) options are –
a) Cells expressing HNK1, a surface marker for migrating and proliferating neural crest cells
b) Cells expressing the neural growth factor receptor p75NTR
c) Cells expressing both p75 and HNK1
d) Cells that can take up the DAPI stain