Microarray Analysis Reveals Increased Transcriptional Repression and Reduced Metabolic Activity but Not Major Changes in the Core Apoptotic Machinery during Maturation of Sympathetic Neurons.

Postnatal maturation of the neurons whose main phenotype and basic synaptic contacts are already established includes neuronal growth, refinement of synaptic contacts, final steps of differentiation, programmed cell death period (PCD) etc. In the sympathetic neurons, postnatal maturation includes permanent end of the PCD that occurs with the same time schedule in vivo and in vitro suggesting that the process could be genetically determined. Also many other changes in the neuronal maturation could be permanent and thus based on stable changes in the genome expression.