细胞技术

Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) was first proposed in 1998 as a typing approach that enables the unambiguous characterization of bacterial isolates in a standardized, reproducible, and portable manner using the human pathogen Neisseria meningitidis as the exemplar organism. S ...

Spacer oligonucleotide typing, or spoligotyping, is a rapid, polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based method for genotyping strains of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTB). Spoligotyping data can be represented in absolute terms (digitally), and the results can be readily ...

Riboswitches are mRNA regions that regulate the expression of genes in response to various cellular metabolites. These RNA sequences, typically situated in the untranslated regions of mRNAs, possess complex structures that dictate highly specific binding to certain ligands, such ...

Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) is a biophysical technique that measures the heat evolved or absorbed during a reaction to report the enthalpy, entropy, stoichiometry of binding, and equilibrium association constant. A significant advantage of ITC over other methods is that ...

Encoded within many RNA sequences is the requisite information for folding of intricate three-dimensional structures. Moreover, many noncoding RNAs can adopt structurally distinct and functionally specialized conformations in response to specific cellular signals. The ...

The adenine-specific pbuE riboswitch undergoes metal ion-dependent folding that involves a long-range tertiary loop–loop interaction between two stem loops. Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) and single-molecule FRET studies demonstrate the ability of the lo ...

The umbilical cord of a healthy neonate contains within it a multipotential treatment for a myriad of diseases and injuries. What was once tossed into the biohazard waste without a second thought is now known to be a goldmine of antigenically immature cells that rival the use of bone marrow for recons ...

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have the potential to play a role in autologous repair of central nervous system injury or disease, circumventing both the complications associated with immune rejection of allogenic cells, and many of the ethical concerns associated with embryonic stem c ...

During development and continuing into adulthood, stem cells function as a reservoir of undifferentiated cell types, whose role is to support cell genesis in several tissues and organs. In the adult, they play an essential homeostatic role by replacing differentiated cells that are lost due ...

Leukodystrophies represent a wide variety of hereditary disorders of the white matter in the central nervous system, where the patients, mostly in infancy or childhood, suffer from progressive and often fatal neurological symptoms due to either a delay or lack of myelin development or loss ...

Since its first description, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, originally designated experimental allergic encephalitis (EAE), has been proposed as animal model to investigate pathogenetic hypotheses and test new treatments in the field of central nervous sys ...

Animal models of neurodegenerative disease are excellent tools for studying pathogenesis and therapies including cellular transplantation. In this chapter, we describe different models of Huntington’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, stereotactic surgery (used in crea ...

The lack of disease-modifying treatments currently available for not just some but most neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and even stroke, helps explain increasing interest in cell-based therapies. One key aim of such treatment is ...

The characteristic CNS responses to injury including increased cell production and attempts at regenerative repair – implicitly predicted where not directly demonstrated by Cajal, but only now more fully confirmed – have important implications for regenerative therapies. Spo ...

Recent results have raised important questions on our ability to amplify stem cell populations in sufficient numbers as to be useful for therapy. Several reports have indicated that human stem cell populations harvested from the adult have low or undetectable telomerase levels, age in cul ...

A useful experimental model to study the pathophysiology of cerebral ischemia without craniectomy is the middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) model. In this model, an intraluminal suture is advanced from the internal carotid artery to occlude the base of the MCA. Standardized proced ...

Noninvasive cellular imaging allows the real-time tracking of grafted cells as well as the monitoring of their migration. Several techniques for in vivo cellular imaging are available that permit the characterization of transplanted cells in a living organism, including magnetic r ...

There is incontrovertible evidence that neural progenitor cells (NPC) are found in the adult brain. The ability to identify and track NPC in the adult brain is of considerable importance if the properties of these cells are to be harnessed as potential therapies for degenerative brain disorde ...

Complete abrogation of the inflammatory response by high-dose cytotoxic therapy at an early stage of MS, when the nervous system has not yet sustained irreparable damage may be successful at preventing the inexorable progression. Immunological and hematological reconstitution ...

We describe the method for efficiently differentiating human embryonic stem cells to neuroepithelial cells in a chemically defined condition. The protocol was established based on the fundamental principle of in vivo neuroectodermal development. The temporal course, morpho ...