OBJECTIVE Advanced age is a major risk factor for ventricular dysfunction and reduction of cardiac reserve. Finding novel approaches to prevent and attenuate heart dysfunction associated with advanced age is a major therapeutic challenge. The present study was designed to test whether engrafted embryonic stem cells could improve myocardial function in aging hearts. METHODS Cultured mouse embr...

Culturing pluripotent stem cells effectively requires substrates coated with feeder cell layers or cell-adhesive matrices. It is difficult to employ as resources for regenerative medicine due risks of culture system contamination by animal-derived factors, the large costs associated use adhesive To enable a coating-free system, we focused on UV/ozone surface modification and atmospheric pressur...

Cover illustration: The cover image is based on the Research Article Repetitive short-pulsed illumination efficiently activates photoactivatable-Cre as continuous in embryonic stem cells and pre-implantation embryos of transgenic mouse by Kanae Kishi et al., https://doi.org/10.1002/dvg.23457.

Cell fate decisions during development are governed by multi-factorial regulatory mechanisms including chromatin remodeling, DNA methylation, binding of transcription factors to specific loci, RNA and protein synthesis. However, the which such “dimensions” coordinate cell currently poorly understood. Here we quantified multi-dimensional molecular changes that occur in mouse embryonic stem cells...

The germ cell nuclear factor (GCNF) is a member of the nuclear receptor super family of transcription factors. GCNF expression during gastrulation and neurulation is critical for normal embryogenesis in mice. GCNF represses expression of the POU domain transcription factor Oct4 during mouse post-implantation development in vivo. Oct4 is thus down-regulated during female gonadal development, whe...

How cell fate becomes restricted during somatic cell differentiation is a long-lasting question in biology. Epigenetic mechanisms not present in pluripotent cells and acquired during embryonic development are expected to stabilize the differentiated state of somatic cells and thereby restrict their ability to convert to another fate. The histone variant macroH2A acts as a component of an epigen...