Neuronal differentiation of ES cells

The purpose of this study was to examine global gene expression during the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells to more restricted neural progenitors. We developed an adherent differentiation protocol with completely defined media that produced 2 distinct classes of neuroepithelia based on timing, morphology and expression of known neural markers. The first stage of differentiation is undifferentiated human ES cells (hESCs). The second stage is aggregates of these hESCs after 6 days of separation from supportive mouse embryonic fibroblasts. The third stage is a primitive anterior neuroepithelia that arises after 10 days of differentiation and is marked by a columnar morphology, expression of Pax6 and anterior neural patterning genes. The fourth stage peaks at 17 days when cells form rosettes that resemble the neural tube and express the pan-neural marker Sox1. Set of arrays organized by shared biological context, such as organism, tumors types, processes, etc. Using regression correlation