Cysteine: A Novel Neural Inducer For Rat Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Objective: mesenchymal stem cells (mscs) can differentiate into various cell types. since cysteine has structural similarities to neuronal inducers b-mercaptoethanol and glutathione, we examined its effect on neural induction of rat bone marrow mscs.materials and methods: in this experimental study, cells were treated in a medium containing 1mm cysteine for 24 hours prior to treatment with neuron inducing medium containing 10 mm cysteine for 1, 2 and 3 hours. cell viability and morphology were assessed by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (mtt) assay and, hoechst, propidium iodide and acridine orange staining respectively. expression of nestin and b-tubulin iii genes, as neural cell-specific markers, was studied reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rt-pcr). the data was statistically analyzed using one-way anova and tukey’s test and p < 0.05 was considered significant.results: after 3 hours of treatment, neuron like morphology with a considerable expression of nestin and b-tubulin iii genes was apparent. the mean cell viability was not significantly different at 1, 2 and 3 hours following induction, compared with the control cells.conclusion: cysteine can induce neural features in rat bone marrow mscs without reducing cell viability. therefore, it can be considered as a safer alternative to toxic neural inducer agents such as b-mercaptoethanol.