Neural stem cells, which differentiate into neurons and glia, are present in the ventricular zone of the embryonal brain. The precise mechanism by which neural stem cells are maintained during embryogenesis remains to be determined. Here, we found that transient misexpression of the basic helix-loop-helix genes Hes1 and Hes5 keeps embryonal telencephalic cells undifferentiated although they hav...

Embryonic stem cells and embryonal carcinoma cells share two key characteristics: pluripotency (the ability to differentiate into endoderm, ectoderm, and mesoderm) and self-renewal (the ability to grow without change in an untransformed, euploid state). Much has been done to identify and characterize transcription factors that are necessary or sufficient to maintain these characteristics. Oct-4...

The behavior of human teratocarcinoma cells, and especially their stem cells (embryonal carcinoma cells), may provide insights into the properties of human early embryonic cells. We report here that human recombinant gamma-interferon (IFN-gamma) induced the expression of major histocompatibility complex Class I (HLA-A, B, C) antigens and beta 2-microglobulin in the two human embryonal carcinoma...

There are few reliable experimental systems available to study the molecular mechanisms that govern human embryonic development. Embryonal carcinoma (EC) cells are pluripotent stem cells derived from teratocarcinomas and are considered the malignant counterparts of human embryonic stem (ES) cells. Several of the existing human EC stem cell lines provide robust and simple culture systems to stud...

Transcriptome profiling facilitates the identification of developmentally regulated genes. To quantify the functionally active genome of P19 embryonic carcinoma (EC) cells induced to form cardiomyocytes, we employed serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) to sequence and compare a total of 171,735 SAGE tags from three libraries (undifferentiated P19 EC cells, differentiation days 3 + 0.5 and ...

Stem cells persist throughout life in diverse tissues by undergoing self-renewing divisions. Self-renewal capacity declines with age, partly because of increasing expression of the tumor suppressor p16(Ink4a). We discovered that the Hmga2 transcriptional regulator is highly expressed in fetal neural stem cells but that expression declines with age. This decrease is partly caused by the increasi...

The behavior of human teratocarcinoma cells, and especially their stem cells (embryonal carcinoma cells), may provide insights into the properties of human early embryonic cells. We report here that human recombinant •y-interferon (IFN-7) induced the expression of major histocompatibility complex Class I (HLA-A, B, C) antigens and /32-microglobulin in the two human embryonal carcinoma cell li...