objective: leukemia inhibitory factor (lif) plays important roles in cellular proliferation, growth promotion and differentiation of various types of target cells. in addition, lif influences bone metabolism, cachexia, neural development, embryogenesis and inflammation. human lif (hlif) is an essential growth factor for the maintenance of mouse embryonic stem cells (escs) and induced pluripoten...

The 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Mario Capecchi, Martin Evans, and Oliver Smithies for developing specific gene modification techniques and mouse embryonic stem cell technology that, when combined, enable the creation of "knockout" mice. Analyses of these mutant animals have revolutionized the elucidation of gene functions, and these mice have proved to be valu...

peroxisomes are small size organelles in nearly all eukaryotic cells involved in various metabolic functions including β-oxidation of very long chain fatty acids and metabolite peroxidation and plasmalogens synthesis. the latter is one of the major constituents in neural cell membranes. the biogenesis of peroxisomes is a complex process which requires multiple proteins encoded by pex genes. dys...

Recent studies have shown that mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) rely on a distinctive genome caretaking network. In this review, we will discuss how mESCs functionally respond to DNA damage and describe several modifications in mESC DNA damage response, which accommodate dynamic cycling and preservation of genetic information. Subsequently, we will discuss how the transition from mESCs to adu...

Recently new reports have proved the pluripotency of spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) derived from male gonad. This pluripotent stem cells resembled Embryonic stem cells recognized as Embryonic Stem like cells (ES like cells). ES like cells forms sharp edge colonies that are immunopositive to pluripotency markers and have differentiation capacity to Ectodermal, Mesodermal and Endodermal layers....