Connecting telomere maintenance and regulation to the developmental origin and differentiation states of neuroblastoma tumor cells

Table 1 Differential expression of telomerase and TRF2 in development and differentiation

	ESC	NPC	NGN	MN	Non-neural progenitor cells	References
Telomerase activity
Cell culture
Human	High activity in embryonic NT2 neuronal precursor cells		Low activity in NT neurons			Kruk et al. [118]
Rat	High activity in NEP stem cells isolated from E10.5 embryos	Low activity in E14.5 neural tubes cells isolated from E14.5 embryos (mixed cell of postmitotic neurons, neuronal precursors, NEP cells, and glial precursors)			High telomerase activity in glial precursor cells	Cai et al., 2002*
Embryo
Mouse	High activity at E13 (embryonic day 13) during brain development progressive decline from E13 to E18 low level until P3 (postnatal day 3) undetectable telomerase activity from P16					Klapper et al. [117]
TRF2
Cell culture
Human	Low levels	High levels			Low in FC and HPC	Ovando-Roche et al. [43]
Mouse		Undetectable	Undetectable	High		Cheng et al. [97]
Mouse	Low or Undetectable	Low or Undetectable				Ovando-Roche et al. [43]
Rat		Detectable	Undetectable in differentiated neural cells Undetectable in cortical neuron		High in glial cells	Zhang et al. [41]
Embryo
Mouse	Undetectable in NPCs and NGNs at E16 during brain development Very low in neurons at E18 Progressively higher levels through P15 High levels in adult brain					Cheng et al. [97]
Rat	High at E14 during brain development Very low after E14 through adult brain					Zhang et al. [41]

ESC embryonic stem cell, NPC neural progenitor cell, NGN newly generated neuron, MN mature neuron, NT2 teratocarcinoma cells with CNS neuronal precursor features, NT postmitotic CNS neurons, NEP neuroepithelial cells, FC human fibroblast, HPC hepatocyte progenitor cell
*Cai J., Wu Y., Mirua T., Pierce J. L., Lucero M. T., Albertine K. H., et al. (2002). Properties of a fetal multipotent neural stem cell (NEP cell). Dev. Biol. 251, 221–240

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