In mixtures, nestin preferentially co-assembles with purified vimentin or the type IV IF protein internexin to form heterodimer coiled-coil molecules.

[8] After subcloning the human nestin gene into plasmid vectors, Dahlstrand et al. determined the nucleotide sequence of all coding regions and parts of the introns.

In order to establish the boundaries of the introns, they used the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify a fragment made from human fetal brain cDNA using two primers located in the first and fourth exon, respectively.

During neuro- and gliogenesis, nestin is replaced by cell type-specific intermediate filaments, e.g. neurofilaments and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP).

Nestin expression is reinduced in the adult during pathological situations, such as the formation of the glial scar after central nervous system injury and during regeneration of injured muscle tissue.

Green fluorescent protein (GFP), whose expression is driven by the nestin regulatory element in transgenic mice, serves to mark hair follicle stem cells.