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Over the last several years, much progress has been made for in vitro culture of mouse and human
ES cells. Our laboratory focuses on the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neural differentiation
from pluripotent cells. Pluripotent cells first become committed to the ectodermal fate and
subsequently differentiate into uncommitted neuroectodermal cells. Both previous mammalian and
amphibian studies on pluripotent cells have indicated that the neural fate is a sort of the basal
direction of the differentiation of these cells while mesoendodermal differentiation requires extrinsic
inductive signals. ES cells differentiate into neuroectodermal cells with a rostral-most character
(telencephalon and hypothalamus) when they are cultured in the absence of strong patterning signals.
In this talk, I first discuss this issue by referring to our recent data on the mechanism of spontaneous
neural differentiation in serum-free culture of mouse ES cells. Then, I will talk about self-organization
phenomena observed in 3D culture of ES cells, which lead to tissue-autonomous
formation of regional structures such as layered cortical tissues. I also discuss our new attempt to
monitor these in vitro morphogenetic processes by live imaging, in particular, self-organizing
morphogenesis of the optic cup in three-dimensional cultures.
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