“…Vimentin is a cytoskeletal, intermediate filament protein very abundant during development, which can be found in immature glial cells, including radial glia (Bignami et al, 1982;Dahl et al, 1981), and in highly undifferentiated neuronal precursors (Cochard and Paulin, 1984). In adult animals, although mainly replaced by other intermediate filament proteins such as GFAP in glial cells and neurofilament triplet protein in neurons (see Steinert and Roop, 1988;Gorham et al, 1991), vimentin persists in many cell populations which are enriched in carnosine-related dipeptides, namely cerebellar Bergmann glia, ependymal cells, tanycytes, a sub-population of astrocytes in large myelinated bundles (Shaw et al, 1981;Pixley and De Vellis, 1984), radial glia-like cells in the supraoptic nucleus (Bonfanti et al, 1993), astrocytes of the glial tubes , and olfactory receptor neurons Gorham et al, 1991). This transition from a precursor type of intermediate filament proteins (vimentin), to more specialized ones, has also been described to occur in skeletal muscle cells (Granger and Lazarides, 1979).…”