Common transcriptional gene profile in neurospheres-derived from pATSCs, pBMSCs, and pNSCs

Gene expression profiles of adult progenitor cells could give important clues for the molecular mechanisms of adult stem cell proliferation and differentiation behaviors. Adult bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs), adipose tissue stromal cells (ATSCs), and neural stem cells (NSCs) have common neuropotential characteristics. They can make neurospheres and can differentiate into neurons and glia in vitro and in vivo. In this study, we found commonly expressed genes in neurospheres from non-human primate BMSCs, ATSCs, and NSCs using Affymetrix cDNA microarray system. The expressed genes from three distinct neurosphere populations (non-human primate derived ATSCs neurosphere, pATSCs-NS; non-human primate derived BMSCs neurosphere, pBMSCs-NS; non-human primate derived NSCs neurosphere, pNSCs-NS) were compared to baseline to calculate fold change. The number of enriched genes was 820 (pATSCs-NS), 856 (pBMSCs-NS), and 1010 (pNSCs-NS). Scatter plots of expression levels of all the genes indicated that the correlation coefficients between the three samples are fairly close to each other and have many similarities at the transcriptional levels. Finally, we found that the expression of 184 genes is enriched in all three categories, 9 selected to regulation of cell cycle, 5 transcription factor, 9 receptor activity, 11 development, and 4 cell–cell signaling. This overlapping gene set of commonly expressed gene products represents a molecular signature of neural lineage related function.