Thread: How do Mesenchymal cells signal differentation of VZ cells?

How and when do the mesenchymal cells signal the neuroepithelial cells of the ventricular zone to differentiate?

Is this a homework assignment? I mean, it doesn't seem the sort of question that just pops into your head when you are walking the dog or fighting off muggers.

lol no it's not homework. I'm a high school student and I'm doing a little search on mouse brain development while I'm volunteering in a lab for the summer. I read that signals induce the cells in the VZ to differentiate but I can't find out how.

Never heard of MSCs interacting with neuroepithelial cells... Maybe this is obvious to you but my advice would be to take a look on Google scholar.

http://scholar.google.com

Search for:

+"mesenchymal stem cells" +"ventricular zone" +"neuroepithelial cells"

Try and find a general review of recent research, rather than a primary paper. That should sort you out.

If you have access to a science library a decent intro dev. bio text should be able to answer your question.

You might have more luck searching for the development of the ependyma, which is what the ventricular zone becomes.

I checked one of my books and I couldn't find anything about mesenchyme with respect to the differentiation of the ventricular zone. It only covered later development of the brain. However, I've always found this text to be very bad when covering the nervous system, so you might have better luck with a different book.