Primitive Neural Stem Cells in the Mouse Brain

Neural stem cells (NSCs) reside in the tissue lining the lateral ventricles of the adult mouse brain. At the top of the hierarchy are primitive (p)NSCs that arise in advance of definitive (d)NSCs embryonically. After the discovery that pNSCs persist in the adult mouse brain, I sought out to characterize pNSCs and determine whether they express the pluripotency gene Oct4 in the adult brain as the do embryonically. Next, I addressed the cell cycle time of pNSCs and whether they are activated to proliferate to repopulate dNSCs after dNSC and downstream progenitor ablation. Finally, I identified cell type specific markers of pNSCs and pharmacological methods to selectively target and activate endogenous pNSCs. These selective markers can be used for future studies to enrich for pNSCs and to develop future therapies to target pNSCs endogenously. Together, this thesis presents evidence that pNSCs are an Oct4-expressing, reserve population at the top of the NSC hierarchy capable of repopulating dNSCs.

Department dc:contributor.department

Medical Science

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Reeve, Rachel Leeder

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• van der Kooy, Derek

• neural stem cells

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/69414

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/69414