N-cadherin Invovles in
P19 Cell in vitro Neuronal
Differentiation
GAO Xiang, YANG Jing, BIAN Wei and JING Nai-He*
( Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry, the Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Shanghai 200031, China；Shanghai Research Center of Life Science,
Shanghai
200031, China )
Abstract N-cadherin plays an important
role in the early morphogenesis of neural tissue. For exploring the possible
role of N-cadherin in neuronal differentiation in vitro, we chose RA
induced P19 cell neuronal differentiation as a model system. Using RT-PCR, we
examined the expression pattern of N-cadherin during P19 cell neuronal
differentiation. The results showed that N-cadherin expression was increased
rapidly during RA induction with its highest expression level at day 3 of
neuronal differentiation, then down-regulated along with neuronal maturation.
This expression pattern was similar with CNS development in vivo.
Then, we constructed a N-cadherin expression-vector and transfected in P19
cells. The stable transfected cell lines, N-cadherin/P19 were selected, and we
found that, after aggregated 4 days, the N-cadherin overexpression P19 cells
could differentiate into neuron-like cells without the RA induction. The
immunocytochemical staining showed that these neuron-like cells expressed
neuron specific marker, NF160. These results suggest that N-cadherin gene is
involved in P19 neuron differentiation.
Key Words N-cadherin； P19 neuron
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