Rt. Yan et Sz. Wang, IDENTIFICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF TENP, A GENE TRANSIENTLY EXPRESSED BEFORE OVERT CELL-DIFFERENTIATION DURING NEUROGENESIS, Journal of neurobiology, 34(4), 1998, pp. 319-328
The initiation of cellular differentiation in the vertebrate central n
ervous system is a cascade of regulated gene expression events involvi
ng both intrinsic and extrinsic factors, Currently, the molecular even
ts underlying the developmental transition from the cessation of cell
proliferation to the onset of cell differentiation during neurogenesis
are still poorly understood, We have identified a gene, tenp, which i
s likely to play a role during the transition, tenp mRNA was detected
in the developing retina and brain, but not in the heart, kidney, or l
iver, Anatomically, cells expressing tenp formed a narrow strip at the
boundary between the ventricular zone (consisting of proliferating ce
lls) and the intermediate zone (occupied by postmitotic, differentiati
ng cells), Further analysis showed that they were bromodeoxyuridine ne
gative and thus postmitotic, yet without apparent differentiation such
as the expression of microtubule-associated protein (MAP2) and neurof
ilament (NF68), When expressed in chicken embryonic fibroblast cells t
hrough transfection, Tenp protein was immunodetected in membrane fract
ions, implying that Tenp might be a membrane protein as predicted by a
computer analysis of its primary sequence, Our data suggested that te
np might be involved in an early neurogenic event that existed transie
ntly after terminal mitosis, yet before the overt differentiation of n
eural precursor cells, (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.