The current paradigms used to investigate the teratogenic effects of alcohol on neurodevelopmental processes typically involve the direct application of alcohol on stem or neural progenitor cells derived in vivo from unexposed animals or in vitro from cell cultures of neural or glial origin. Without the influence of the placenta, maternal metabolism, and the environment of the womb, it is difficult to extrapolate results from these in vitro studies on the effects of alcohol exposure in vivo. However, research using in vitro alcohol exposure on neural stem cells has demonstrated reduced neurogenesis either via increased length of the cell cycle (Hicks et al., 2010; Jacobs & Miller, 2001) or alterations of transcription factors that provide the balance between maintenance of the progenitor pool and differentiation (Ogony et al., 2013). Based on these findings, we sought to investigate the effects of in vivo alcohol on expression of neurogenesis-related genes using two sets of ex vivo culture conditions: proliferating neural progenitor cells derived from the telencephalons of alcohol-exposed and control embryonic tissue and the differentiation of those cells into a mixed cell culture of neurons and astrocytes (Figs. 1 & 2).
