| Literature DB >> 12399108 |
Masamitsu Hoshikawa1, Akiko Yonamine, Morichika Konishi, Nobuyuki Itoh.
Abstract
We examined the expression of fibroblast growth factor-18 (FGF-18) in the rat brain during postnatal development by in situ hybridization. FGF-18 was transiently expressed at the early postnatal stages in various regions of the rat brain including the cerebral cortex and hippocampus. FGF-18 in the brain was preferentially expressed in neurons but not in glial cells. To elucidate the role of FGF-18 in the brain, we examined the ligand-specificity of FGF-18 by the BIAcore system. FGF-18 was found to bind to FGF receptors (FGFRs)-3c and -2c but not to FGFR-1c, suggesting that FGF-18 acts on glial cells but not on neurons. Therefore, we examined the mitogenic activity of FGF-18 for cultured rat astrocytes and microglia. FGF-18 was found to have mitogenic activity for both astrocytes and microglia. We also examined the neurotrophic activity of FGF-18 for cultured rat cortical neurons. FGF-18 was found to have no neurotrophic activity. The present findings indicated that FGF-18 is a unique FGF that plays a role as a neuron-derived glial cell growth factor in early postnatal development when gliogenesis occurs. Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science B.V.Entities:
Mesh：
Substances：
Year: 2002 PMID： 12399108 DOI： 10.1016/s0169-328x(02)00393-5
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Brain Res Mol Brain Res ISSN： 0169-328X