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Volume 17, Number 20,
Issue of October 15, 1997
pp. 7805-7816
Copyright ©1997 Society for Neuroscience
Expression Patterns of Developmental Control Genes in Normal and
Engrailed-1 Mutant Mouse Spinal Cord Reveal Early Diversity
in Developing Interneurons
Received June 12, 1997; revised July 30, 1997; accepted August 5, 1997.
Michael P. Matise and
Alexandra L. Joyner
New York University Medical School, Skirball Institute of
Biomolecular Medicine, Developmental Genetics Program, New York,
New York 10016
The vertebrate spinal cord has long served as a useful system for
studying the pattern of cell differentiation along the dorsoventral (d/v) axis. In this paper, we have defined the expression of several classes of genes expressed in restricted d/v domains in the
intermediate region (IR) of the mouse spinal cord, in which most
interneurons are generated. From this analysis, we have found that
spinal cord interneurons and their precursors express unique
combinations of transcription factors and Notch ligands at the onset of
their differentiation. The domains of expression of a number of
different classes of genes share similar boundaries, indicating that
there could be a basic subdivision of the ventral IR into four distinct regions. This differential gene expression suggests that spinal cord
interneurons acquire unique identities early in their development and
that Notch signaling mechanisms may participate in the determination of
cell fate along the d/v axis. Gene expression studies in
Engrailed-1 (En-1) mutants showed that
En-1-expressing and other closely positioned classes of
neurons do not require the homeodomain protein En-1 for their early
pattern of differentiation. Rather, it is suggested that
En-1 may function to distinguish a subset of
interneurons during the later maturation of the spinal cord.
Key words:
Engrailed-1;
interneurons;
Notch ligands;
spinal cord;
transcription factors;
expression patterns
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