“…The rat pheochromocytoma cell line PC12 has been used widely to study neuronal differentiation (Greene and Tischler, 1982) and is a useful system in which to distinguish those intracellular signals that may be specific for inducing differentiation on the one hand from those that induce proliferation on the other. PC12 cells proliferate as round chromaffin-like cells when grown in standard culture conditions, but on addition of nerve growth factor (NGF) or basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), the cells stop dividing, extend numerous processes, and display characteristics of fully differentiated sympathetic neurons (Green and Tischler, 1982;Togari et al, 1985;Rydel and Green, 1987;Schubert et al, 1987 Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125. or src transforming proteins (Alema et al, 1985;BarSagi and Feramisco, 1985;Satoh et al, 1987;Eveleth et al, 1989;Rausch et al, 1989). Microinjection of antibodies that block the function of either the ras or the src proteins inhibits the induction of neurite outgrowth by NGF or by bFGF in both fused (Hagag et al, 1986) and native PC12 cells (Altin et al, 1991b), suggesting that these proteins are essential components of signal transduction pathways leading to differentiation in response to NGF and bFGF in PC12 cells.…”