Investigating the role of Lin28A in human embryonic neural lineage function

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Studies focusing on the early development of the nervous system typically utilize mouse models. While this work has provided tremendous insight into how the cells in the nervous system are formed, the direct relevance to human neural development is not always clear. In this proposal, we will be using the most immature human cells, embryonic stem cells, to understand the earliest changes during neural development including how different types of neural cells form, how neural cells grow, how they take on stem cell properties and how they move. We have recently characterized human embryonic stem cells that grow very rapidly and do not properly develop into different neural cell types. By comparing these variant human embryonic neural cells to normal human embryonic neural cells, we have identified a list of genes that may regulate the balance between human neural cell growth and development into more specific functional cell types. We will test how one of these genes, Lin28A, directly regulates the balance between these early neural processes. Identifying how genes control this balance will be critical in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the basic formation of our nervous system and how small expression changes can give rise to very different outcomes.