Fig. 1

Astrocyte growth conditions define the rate of direct astrocyte to neuron conversion a Schemes depicting viral vector design and the experimental paradigm used for astrocyte to neuron conversion. b,c” Micrographs illustrating the identity of Neurog2-transduced cells 7 days after transduction in the EGF + bFGF (b) and bFGF (c) culture conditions. b’, b’’, c’, and c” are magnifications of boxed areas in b and c, respectively. Yellow arrows indicate successfully converted cells, whereas white arrowheads indicate cells failing to convert. Scale bars: 100 µm in b and c; 50 µm in b’, b”, c’, and c”. d Dot plot depicting the proportion of transduced cells converting to neurons in EGF + bFGF and bFGF cultures 7 days after transduction with different neurogenic fate determinants. Data are shown as median ± IQR; each single dot represents an independent biological replicate. Significance was tested with two-tailed Mann-Whitney test. p-values: black font corresponds to the comparison to the control and colored to the comparison between EGF + bFGF and bFGF. e Volcano plot depicting proteins enriched in astrocytes cultured in bFGF (magenta circles) and EGF + bFGF (green diamonds) culture conditions (fold change > 1.5; p value < 0.05). f, g Plots depicting the top five enriched GO terms in protein sets enriched in bFGF (f) and EGF + bFGF (g) cultures. h Western blot depicting levels of Hmgb2 protein in EGF + bFGF and bFGF astrocyte cultures. j Dot plot showing the relative levels of Hmgb2 (normalized to actin) in EGF + bFGF and bFGF cultures. Data are shown as median ± IQR; single dots represent independent biological replicates. Paired t-test was used for the significance test. Abbreviation: GO, Gene Ontology