A specific, non-immune system-related isoform of the human inducible nitric oxide synthase is expressed during differentiation of human stem cells into various cell types.

Background: NOS2 expression is mostly found in bacteria-exposed or cytokine-treated tissues and is mostly connected to innate immune reactions. There are three isoforms of NOS2 (NOS2-1 to -3). In RNA-seq data sets, analyzing inflammatory gene expression, only expression of the NOS2-1 mRNA isoform is detected.

Human stem cell-based models for studying autism spectrum disorder-related neuronal dysfunction.

The controlled differentiation of pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) into neurons and glia offers a unique opportunity to study early stages of human central nervous system development under controlled conditions in vitro. With the advent of cell reprogramming and the possibility to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from any individual in a scalable manner, these studies can be extended to a disease- and patient-specific level. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is considered a neurodevelopmental disorder, with substantial evidence pointing to early alterations in neurogenesis and network formation as key pathogenic drivers.

Protocol for the Standardized Generation of Forward Programmed Cryopreservable Excitatory and Inhibitory Forebrain Neurons.

This protocol describes a highly standardized pipeline for transcription factor-mediated forward programming of human pluripotent stem cells into highly enriched glutamatergic or GABAergic neurons followed by a cryopreservation step that enables the generation of large quality-controlled batches. This approach is particularly useful for reducing interexperimental variability in the context of collaborative studies across different locations and time points. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Meijer et al.

Accuracy of expert predictions of seizure freedom after epilepsy surgery.

Purpose: To evaluate the accuracy of expert estimations of achieving seizure freedom after epilepsy surgery in the context of presurgical patient counseling.

Method: The retrospective study comprised a random sample of 200 patients who underwent any type of resective epilepsy surgery at the University of Bonn Epilepsy Center and the routine 1-year postoperative control visit in the years from 2008-2016. The prediction by a team of epileptologists and the actual seizure outcome were extracted from the pre- and postsurgical medical files, respectively.

An Autaptic Culture System for Standardized Analyses of iPSC-Derived Human Neurons.

iPSC-derived human neurons are expected to revolutionize studies on brain diseases, but their functional heterogeneity still poses a problem. Key sources of heterogeneity are the different cell culture systems used. We show that an optimized autaptic culture system, with single neurons on astrocyte feeder islands, is well suited to culture, and we analyze human iPSC-derived neurons in a standardized, systematic, and reproducible manner.

A Single-Cell Model for Synaptic Transmission and Plasticity in Human iPSC-Derived Neurons.

Synaptic dysfunction is associated with many brain disorders, but robust human cell models to study synaptic transmission and plasticity are lacking. Instead, current in vitro studies on human neurons typically rely on spontaneous synaptic events as a proxy for synapse function. Here, we describe a standardized in vitro approach using human neurons cultured individually on glia microdot arrays that allow single-cell analysis of synapse formation and function.