It has been suggested that the transcription factor Nanog is essential for the establishment of pluripotency during the derivation of embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). However, successful reprogramming to pluripotency with a growing list of divergent transcription factors, at ever-increasing efficiencies, suggests that there may be many distinct routes to a plurip...

Background: The efficiency of in vitro fertilization (IVF) is still low to be developed to blastocyst stage probably because of environmental conditions. It is likely that in vitro environment can not exactly mimic in vivo environment due to differences in media, metabolic content, atmospheric composition, temperature and pH. Therefore it may affect embryo quality by changing in embryo gene exp...

BACKGROUND Differentiated cells can be reprogrammed into pluripotency by transduction of four defined transcription factors. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) are expected to be useful for regenerative medicine as well as basic research. Recently, the report showed that mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEF) cells are not essential for reprogramming. However, in using fibroblasts as donor c...

How metastases develop is not well understood and no genetic mutations have been reported as specific metastatic drivers. Here we have addressed the idea that epigenetic reprogramming by GLI-regulated pluripotent stemness factors promotes metastases. Using primary human colon cancer cells engrafted in mice, we find that transient expression of OCT4, SOX2, KLF4 +/- cMYC establishes an enhanced p...

The function of pluripotency genes in differentiation is a matter of investigation. We report here that Nanog and Oct4 are reexpressed in two mouse embryonic stem cell (mESC) lines following exposure to the differentiating agent DETA/NO. Both cell lines express a battery of both endoderm and mesoderm markers following induction of differentiation with DETA/NO-based protocols. Confocal analysis ...

Accumulating evidence indicates that Nanog plays a central role in modulating the biological behaviors of human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In the present study, we employed transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALEN) to disrupt Nanog expression in HepG2 cells and obtained subcloned cells with diallelic Nanog mutations. Signific...