engaged genes for stem cell maintenance is a prerequisite of the NSC restriction into neural differentiation. This is demonstrated by migrated cells that: contained diminished histone marks, OCT4-negative immunostaining, and acquired neural morphology with neural fibers and smooth outlines, all indicating that reduction of these histone marks allowed for neural differentiation. In contrast, mixed among the migrated and differentiated cells, was a scattered group of cells with a highly granulated cytoplasm and undifferentiated morphology, which were OCT4-negative and maintained or regained high 3me-H3K4 and 3me-H3K27 marks. We believe that this subpopulation of cells with high H3K4 and H3K27 methylation, which is obviously not associated with the expression of OCT4, might be associated with a new set of genes for a distinct heterogeneous subpopulation. The high granulation in the cytoplasm and the non-differentiated morphology suggest that this migrated subpopulation may undergo further differentiation into other phenotypes similar to the migrated neural crest cells in peripheral tissue. Deciphering methylated H3K4 and H3K27 associated genes would provide insight on this phenotype cell development and is in progress.
