A Gene Expression Study of the TGF-\beta Signaling Pathway Components in Differentiating PC12 Cells

Authors: IŞIL AKSAN KURNAZ

Abstract: The neuronal differentiation process has been studied in great detail from many aspects. In the PC12 system, NGF was found to induce neuronal differentiation as measured by neurite extensions and neuronal marker expression. This effect was seen to be mainly conducted through the Ras/MAPK pathway; however, additional pathways are suspected to play a significant role in this cellular response. One such pathway is Smad signaling - NGF was previously reported to induce the expression of the TGF-\beta signal, although the physiological relevance of this was not completely understood. In this study, we analyzed the expression profiles of several TGF-\beta pathway components, in an attempt to understand the potential role of this pathway in NGF-induced differentiation of PC12 cells.

Keywords: PC12, TGF-\beta, Smad, NGF, gene expression profiling, neuronal differentiation

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