Manufacturing New Neurons from Glia in Postnatal Brains

Direct lineage reprogramming emerges as an innovative strat-egy for cell-based therapy. In the postnatal and adult brain, different types of glial cells can be converted into neurons by forced expression of neurogenic transcription factors such as the proneural factors achaete-scute-like ۱ (Ascl۱) and neuro-genin ۲ (Neurog۲). While there is ample proof-of-principle evi-dence for successful conversion, many aspects of the process remain enigmatic. In my presentation, I will discuss our efforts to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms that un-derlie reprogramming into neurons and present our attempts at generating subtype-specific neurons in the mouse cerebral cor-tex in vivo.