| First Author | Hughes SM | Year | 1987 |
| Journal | Development | Volume | 101 |
| Issue | 1 | Pages | 157-67 |
| PubMed ID | 3449365 | Mgi Jnum | J:9158 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:57621 | Citation | Hughes SM, et al. (1987) An inducer protein may control the timing of fate switching in a bipotential glial progenitor cell in rat optic nerve. Development 101(1):157-67 |
| abstractText | In rat optic nerve, oligodendrocytes and type-2 astrocytes develop from a common (O-2A) progenitor cell. The first oligodendrocytes differentiate at birth, while the first type-2 astrocytes differentiate in the second postnatal week. We previously showed that the timing of oligodendrocyte differentiation depends on an intrinsic clock in the O-2A progenitor cell. Here we provide evidence that the timing of type-2 astrocyte differentiation, by contrast, may depend on an inducing protein that appears late in the developing nerve. We show that extracts of 3- to 4-week-old, but not 1-week-old, rat optic nerve contain a protein (apparent Mr approximately 25,000) that induces O-2A progenitor cells in culture to express glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), an astrocyte-specific marker in the rat central nervous system. |
