Hei,

I just started to work on neuroblastoma differentiation...

I am looking for reviews explaining what is happening in the cell when they are differentiating.

I found a paper describing a tumor suppressor in neuroblastoma that induces cell differentiation and a (G1/G0) cell cycle arrest. I do not understand why they distinguish between cell differentiation and cell cycle arrest in this case. I suppose that differentiation would be indicated by an increased number of cells in the G0/G1 phase of the cell cycle. 

Are cells still dividing (when cells start to differentiate) and is there a terminal differentiation at a certain time point where cells no longer divide?Thus, is the differentiation a kind of process in which cells become "more and more differentiated" and first enter the G0 Phase when reaching terminal differentiation? Or is it rather a process in which cells arrest in G0 in order to differentiate until they are terminally differentiated?

What about the metabolism of differentiating cells? 

On friday, I "forgot" to throw away a plate with neuroblastoma cells. Today, the control cells were all dead, most likely due to depletion of nutrients (eight days in culture without medium change is a long time...). In contrast to this, the cells in which I induced differentiation are fine.  Now, I try to understand why all control cells are dead while the differentiated cells are not.

Thus, I am looking for good reviews about neuroblastoma differentiation and/or differentiation in general.