Vitamin A Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Vitamin A, including details on retinol, benefits, dosage, supplements, deficiency, information.

Involvement of membrane protein GDE2 in retinoic acid-induced neurite formation in Neuro2A cells.

Yanaka N, Nogusa Y, Fujioka Y, Yamashita Y, Kato N

Department of Molecular and Applied Bioscience, Graduate School of Biosphere Science, Hiroshima University, 4-4, Kagamiyama 1-chome, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8528, Japan. yanaka@hiroshima-u.ac.jp

We show that a glycerophosphodiester phosphodiesterase homolog, GDE2, is widely expressed in brain tissues including primary neurons, and that the expression of GDE2 in neuroblastoma Neuro2A cells is significantly upregulated during neuronal differentiation by retinoic acid (RA) treatment. Stable expression of GDE2 resulted in neurite formation in the absence of RA, and GDE2 accumulated at the regions of perinuclear and growth cones in Neuro2A cells. Furthermore, a loss-of-function of GDE2 in Neuro2A cells by RNAi blocked RA-induced neurite formation. These results demonstrate that GDE2 expression during neuronal differentiation plays an important role for growing neurites.

Published 13 February 2007 in FEBS Lett, 581(4): 712-8.
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