Recent research by neuroscientist Fred Gage and colleagues at the University of California (UC), San Diego, has shown that one of the most common types of jumping gene in people, called L1, is particularly abundant in human stem cells in the brain that ultimately differentiate into neurons and plays an important role in regulating neuronal development and proliferation. (sciencemag.org)
The transit amplifying cell undergoes multiple rounds of symmetrical divisions before all of its daughter cells begin the process of differentiating into neurons. (ucsf.edu)
Following this, they demonstrated that neural progenitors from embryonic stem cells could differentiate themselves into neurons in rat brains presenting lesions similar to those observed in humans. (istem.eu)