Early neuronal progenitor cell line expressing solely non-catalytic isoform of TrkC.

TrkC is a receptor for neurotrophin-3 that regulates development of neuronal precursors. Transduction of signals into receptor-dependent signaling pathways is mainly due to the activation of the intrinsic tyrosine kinase of the TrkC receptor. Alternative splicing of the trkC transcripts generates catalytic and non-catalytic isoforms. The non-catalytic isoform, denoted as TrkC-NC2, contains unique sequence, instead of deleted entire kinase domain. Here, we report that neural cell line MB-G, derived from brain of embryos of transgenic tsA58-SV40 mice, contains mRNA encoding TrkC-NC2 without concomitant expression of mRNA for catalytic TrkC molecule.