I want to study the gene of interest during neuronal differentiation. Although there are many ways of promoting neuronal differentiation; I want to know if NGF-PC12 model system is the best one. If not, which is greatly accepted?
With the advent of neural progenitor/stem cells, they may offer a better platform over the non-neuronal, renal medulla-derived PC12 cell line for investigations of neuronal differentiation.
now a days people using NT2 (N tera 2) cells for differentiation studies, But PC12 is also a good choice as people has been using this for decades.
I think that PC12 cells would no longer be considered the "best" model of neuronal differentiation. Although there is a wealth of knowledge about their differentiation, they are derived from a tumor and come from adrenal chromaffin cell origins (which may or may not reflect the role of your gene). NT2 cells are of human origin (which I view as an advantage) but do take a long time to differentiate. Another possibility are P19 cells, although they have a tumorogenic background, they have a normal chromosomal complement. (PC12 and P19 cells are discussed in a text book entitled Culturing Nerve Cells by Banker and Goslin.) My bias is towards embryonic stem cell differentiation, where you would be starting out with a "normal" cell with normal genetic background. There are now a number of mouse and human cell lines available and differentiation protocols around depending on what subtype of neuron you are interested in. Several companies sell the ES cells (e.g. Life Technologies). In addition, there are iPS (pluripotent) neural stem cells that can also be purchased and differentiated (e.g. from Cellular Dynamics Inc in Wisconsin). They are not inexpensive, but they would take the guesswork out of the differentiation process since they provide differentiation media and precise protocols for the process. Hope this is helpful.
After looking at the valuable comments from all of you, it is quite evident that neural stem stem cells present a good system to study neuronal differentiation. Thanks to all you.
Yes, I strongly agree stem cells will be the way to go. PC12 cells do not make synapses, people have used PC12 cells mostly for dense core vesicles trafficking and exocytosis studies, all the best
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