The influence of retinoic acid on the human oligodendrocyte precursor cells by RNA-sequencing

Retinoic acid (RA), a metabolite of vitamin A, has been found to influence regeneration in the adult central nervous system (CNS). There may be an effect of RA in the recovery/repair in multiple sclerosis (MS), an autoimmune and neurodegenerative disease of the CNS. We hypothesized that RA is a regulator of the further differentiation of oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) – cells key to the remyelination process in MS. We conducted studies utilizing RNA-sequencing in human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-derived neural stem cells (NSCs) and OPCs so as to understand the role of transcriptional regulators during transition from both ESCs to NSCs and NSCs to OPCs. We identified that expression of retinoic acid receptors β and γ (RARβ and RARγ ) was significantly increased following the transition from NSCs to OPCs. We also demonstrated that long term in vitro culture of hESC-derived OPC with different isoforms of RA led to the significant up-regulation of two known transcriptional inhibitors of oligodendrocyte differentiation: Hes5 following prolonged treatment with all-trans-RA, 9-cis RA and 13-cis RA; and Id4 following treatment with 13cisRA. These results suggest that long term exposure to certain RA isoforms may impact the continued differentiation of this population.