The bHLH transcription factor Olig2 promotes oligodendrocyte differentiation in collaboration with Nkx2.2.

By Qiao Zhou, G. Choi, David J. Anderson. Neuron, 2001

615 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Olig2, a basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor, is expressed in a restricted domain of the spinal cord ventricular zone that sequentially generates motoneurons and oligodendrocytes. Just prior to oligo-dendrocyte precursor formation, the domains of Olig2 and Nkx2.2 expression switch from being mutually exclusive to overlapping, and Neurogenins1 and 2 are extinguished within this region. Coexpression of Olig2 with Nkx2.2 in the spinal cord promotes ectopic and precocious oligodendrocyte differentiation. Both proteins function as transcriptional repressors in this assay. This effect is blocked by forced expression of Neurogenin1. By contrast, misexpression of Olig2 alone derepresses Neurogenins and promotes motoneuron differentiation. Olig2 therefore functions sequentially in motoneuron and oligodendrocyte fate specification. This dual action is enabled by spatio-temporal changes in the expression domains of other transcription factors with which Olig2 functionally interacts.

Subfields: Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/038a12145b5a57a89270e70d730f3b3ba0d208a1

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Citations in the corpus

The bHLH transcription factors OLIG2 and OLIG1 couple neuronal and glial subtype specification. (2002, methodology): “In recent years, a great factor appears to function in both cases as a transcripdeal has been learned about the transcriptional control tional repressor (Novitch et al., 2001; Zhou et al., 2001).”
Opposing FGF and retinoid pathways control ventral neural pattern, neuronal differentiation, and segmentation during body axis extension. (2003, background): “…that somites can both Olig2 (Qiu et al., 1998; Cai et al., 1999; Mizuguchi et al.,downregulate Fgf8 and promote neuronal differentiation 2001; Zhou et al., 2001) are also first expressed (likein explants of spinal cord primordium; however, just Pax6 and NeuroM) broadly coincident with…”
The Sox9 transcription factor determines glial fate choice in the developing spinal cord. (2003, background): “Thirdly, oligodendrocyte progenitors might be recruited from other domains of the ventricular zone, such as the p3 domain, which has recently been implicated as an alternate source of oligodendrocytes (Zhou et al. 2001; Fu et al. 2002).”
Proneural genes and the specification of neural cell types (2002, background): “The downregulation of Ngn2 expression has been proposed to be a key step in the transition between the phases of neurogenesis and oligodendrogenesis in the ventral spinal cor”
Coordinate regulation of motor neuron subtype identity and pan-neuronal properties by the bHLH repressor Olig2. (2001, methodology): “Cell 101, 435–445. son (Zhou et al., 2001).”
Regulation of innate immune responses in the brain (2009, background): “The basic helix–loop–helix transcription factor oligodendrocyte transcription factor 2 ( OLIG2 ) is necessary for oligodendrocyte lineage specificatio”
Specification of motoneurons from human embryonic stem cells (2005, background): “2, homeodomain proteins expressed in ventral neural progenitor”