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The ventricular zone (VZ) harbors the largest neurogenic niche in the adult mammalian brain and is consisted of neural stem cells (NSCs) and multiciliated ependymal cells (EPCs). Previous lineage tracing studies showed that both NSCs and EPCs were derived from radial glial cells (RGCs). However, the transcriptomic dynamics and the molecular mechanisms guiding the cell fate commitment during the differentiation remain poorly understood. In this study, we analyzed the developing VZ of mice at single-cell resolution and identified three distinct cellular states of RGCs: bipotent glial progenitor cells (bGPCs), neonatal NSC-neuroblasts (nNSC-NBs) and neonatal EPCs (nEPCs). The differentiation from bGPCs to nNSC-NBs and nEPCs forms a continuous bifurcating trajectory. Analysis along the NSC branch unveiled a novel intermediate state of cells expressing oligodendrocyte precursor cell (OPC) and neuroblast (NB) marker genes simultaneously. Several transcription factors (TFs) were found to be essential for the EPC-lineage differentiation. Notably, we uncovered that TFEB can tune NSC/EPC bifurcation, independent of its canonical function as a master regulator of the lysosome biogenesis. TFEB activation prevents the overproduction of EPCs by cooperating with LHX2 to balance the expressions of many multicilia-related genes while promotes the diļ¬erentiation into NSC-NBs. Our results resolve the dynamic repertoire of divergent RGCs during VZ development and offer novel insights into the potential application of TFEB-targeted clinical drugs in VZ-related disorders, such as hydrocephalus and neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs).
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003318 | DOI Listing |
EMBO Mol Med
September 2025
Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Medical Innovation Center and State Key Laboratory of Cardiovascular Diseases, Shanghai East Hospital, National Stem Cell Translational Resource Center & Ministry of Education Stem Cell Resource Center, Frontier Science Center for Stem Cell Research, School of Li
Primary microcephaly, a rare congenital condition characterized by reduced brain size, occurs due to impaired neurogenesis during brain development. Through whole-exome sequencing, we identified compound heterozygous loss-of-function mutations in CENTRIN 3 (CETN3) in a 5-year-old patient with primary microcephaly. As CETN3 has not been previously linked to microcephaly, we investigated its potential function in neurodevelopment in human pluripotent stem cell-derived cerebral organoids.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOpen Biol
September 2025
National Brain Research Centre, Manesar, Haryana, India.
E3 ubiquitin ligases regulate the cellular proteome proteasome-dependent protein degradation; however, there exist limited studies outlining their non-canonical functions. RNA-binding ubiquitin ligases (RBULs) represent a subset of E3 ligases that harbour RNA-binding domains, making them uniquely positioned to function as both RNA-binding proteins and E3 ligases. Our initial microarray screen for E3 ligases from mouse cortical neural progenitor cells identified MEX3B, a known RNA-binding ubiquitin ligase, to be differentially expressed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCell Syst
September 2025
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA; Data Sciences Platform, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA. Electronic address:
Spatial transcriptomics allows for the measurement of gene expression within the native tissue context. However, despite technological advancements, computational methods to link cell states with their microenvironment and compare these relationships across samples and conditions remain limited. To address this, we introduce Tissue Motif-Based Spatial Inference across Conditions (TissueMosaic), a self-supervised convolutional neural network designed to discover and represent tissue architectural motifs from multi-sample spatial transcriptomic datasets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCell Rep
September 2025
Department of Neurology, University of California, Los Angeles, David Geffen School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; Department of Neurobiology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research, Un
Neurodevelopmental disorders often impair multiple cognitive domains. For instance, a genetic epilepsy syndrome might cause seizures due to cortical hyperexcitability and present with memory impairments arising from hippocampal dysfunction. This study examines how a single disorder differentially affects distinct brain regions using induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived cortical- and hippocampal-ganglionic eminence assembloids to model developmental and epileptic encephalopathy 13, a condition arising from gain-of-function mutations in the SCN8A gene encoding the sodium channel Nav1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRNA Biol
September 2025
Department of Stem Cell Biology, School of Medicine, Konkuk University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Neural stem cells (NSCs) are multipotent stem cells with self-renewal capacity, able to differentiate into all neural lineages of the central nervous system, including neurons, oligodendrocytes, and astrocytes; thus, their proliferation and differentiation are essential for embryonic neurodevelopment and adult brain homoeostasis. Dysregulation in these processes is implicated in neurological disorders, highlighting the need to elucidate how NSCs proliferate and differentiate to clarify the mechanisms of neurogenesis and uncover potential therapeutic targets. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, post-transcriptional regulators of gene expression involved in many aspects of nervous system development and function.
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