Comparison Of Two Methods Of Inducing Human IPSCs Into Neurons

Nerve and brain research has always been one of hotspots in the field of life science.Difficulties in obtaining human neuronal cells,their low survival rate in vitro and ethical restrictions have greatly hampered the development of neurobiology.The differences between animal brain and human brain also prevented the usage of animal models in many aspects of study,especially studies involving human-specific traits.Therefore,appropriate materials are very crucial for the advancing of this field.Human induced pluripotent stem cells(iPSCs)can differentiate into cells of a few types,and even individual-specific cell groups.IPSC-originated neuronal cells or neural tissues have a good application prospect as a suitable research platform in these studies.We used two reported experimental methodologies and successfully induced human neurons from iPSCs.Based on our results,we made a comparison and summary of pros and cons of the two experimental procedures.Fast and high-efficient inducing method was relatively less cost and a shorter induction time(25 to 35 days).The induced neurons were in good condition,and survived for a long time.Nevertheless,the stage of neural stem cells was hard to observe and the heterogeneity in the induced neural cell population was high,leading to more cells with unknown differentiation stage and differentiation status,which brought negative effects on the further differentiation to neurons.Dual-SMAD method made a higher cost with a long induction time(35 to 50 days).In the early differentiation stage,the obvious rosette-like structure of neural stem cells was observed,and the heterogeneity of cell population was low.The efficiency of neuronal cell production was high but neurons survived less time.Comparing the above results of the two methods,we would choose Fast and high-efficient inducing method to provide human neural cells for the future study of human-specific miR-941 functions in human brain evolution.