Chordin-like protein 1 promotes neuronal differentiation by inhibiting bone morphogenetic protein-4 in neural stem cells

摘要

In the present study, the effects of chordin-like protein 1 (CHRDL1) overexpression, together with bone morphogenetic protein-4 (BMP-4) treatment, on the differentiation of rat spinal cord-derived neural stem cells (NSCs) was investigated. Adult rat spinal cord-derived NSCs were cultured in serum-free medium. The recombined eukaryotic expression vector pSecTag2/Hygro B-CHRDL1 was transfected into adult rat spinal cord-derived NSCs using a lipid-based transfection reagent and protein expression was assessed by western blot analysis. Differentiation of transfected NSCs following BMP-4 treatment was determined by immuno-cytochemistry. The percentage of microtubule-associated protein-2 (MAP-2)-positive cells in the BMP-4-treated (B) group was found to be significantly lower compared with that in the non-transfected control (N) group. The percentage of MAP-2-positive cells in the pSecTag2/Hygro B-CHRDL1-transfected, BMP-4-treated group was identified to be significantly higher compared with that in group B, however, no significant difference was observed between group N and the transfected, non-BMP-4-treated control group. The current study indicates that CHRDL1 protein antagonizes BMP-4 activity and induces spinal cord-derived NSCs to differentiate into neurons.