Fig. 8.

White matter precursor cells may constitute a pool of multipotential progenitors. By 1 week after FACS, some P/hCNP2:hGFP-sorted cells were noted to mature into either TuJ1⁺ neurons (A) or GFAP⁺ astrocytes (B). Both the TuJ1⁺ (red in A) and GFAP⁺ (red in B) cells were confirmed visually as expressing P/hCNP2:hGFP (green). No such neuronal differentiation of CNP2:hGFP-identified cells was ever noted in unsorted plates, within which these cells generally matured as oligodendrocytes and much less so as astrocytes. This suggests that P/hCNP2-defined progenitors may retain some degree of multilineage potential, which may be selectively exercised in the low-density, homogeneous environment of a sorted cell pool in which paracrine influences on differentiation are minimized.