In this week's Journal Stream we are celebrating the cortical interneuron, with a collection of papers describing the differentiation of cortical interneurons from human pluripotent stem cells, the differentiation of medial ganglionic eminence (MGE)-like progenitor cells from human embryonic stem cells, as well as a methods paper describing a way to mark MGE-like cells in ES differentiation experiments. Aberrant cortical interneurons have been implicated in a number of psychiatric and neurological diseases including epilepsy and schizophrenia and these studies suggest the potential for a tractable model to study these diseases in the laboratory.
Papers of the Week
In October 2012 Shinya Yamanaka and John Gurdon received “the call” that is every scientist’s dream.
On Oct. 20, E. Donnall Thomas, the “father of bone marrow transplantation,” died at age 92.
On July 26, the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine announced $151 million worth of grants for research that would take stem cell therapies from the laboratory to the clinic.