“…It was observed upon transduction of rodent telencephalic precursors with artificial alleles of Stat3, encoding for a gain-of-function version of this protein (Stat3c, constitutively dimerizing, however still requiring Lif stimulation for its transactivating properties), or encoding for dominant-negative versions of it (Stat3f, unable to get Y-phosphorylated, and Stat3d, unable to bind to DNA) )(Gu et al, 2005. Moreover, astrogenic properties of pStat3 were evident upon cre/loxP-mediated ablation of Stat3 in murine E14.5 cortico-cerebral NSCs (Cao et al, 2010), as well as after knock-down of Stat3 mediated by RNAi (Aberg et al, 2001;Barnabé-Heider et al, 2005;He et al, 2005). Interestingly, reduced astrogenesis caused by Stat3-LOF manipulations was often associated to an excess of neuronal differentiation (Gu et al, 2005;Cao et al, 2010).…”