Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) possess pluripotency, which is the capacity of cells to differentiate into all lineages of the mature organism. Increasing evidence suggests that the pluripotent state of ESCs is regulated by a combination of extrinsic and intrinsic factors. The underlying mechanisms, however, are not completely understood. Here, we show that March5, an E3 ubiquitin ligase, is involv...

Pluripotent cells have unique properties of self-renewal while maintaining developmental potential to differentiate into all three germ layers. By definition, pluripo-tent cells have no predetermined lineage program, thereby forming the fundamental basis of enquiry and experimental investigations to understand cell fate decisions. Molecular and cellular insights into human pluripotent stem cell...

Cell-cultured protein technology has become increasingly attractive due to its sustainability and climate benefits. The aim of this study is determine the nutritional quality human-induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-cultured proteins in an advanced 3D peptide hydrogel system for highly efficient production cell-cultured proteins. Our previous demonstrated a PGmatrix embedded culture long-ter...

Conventional generation of stem cells from human blastocysts produces a developmentally advanced, or primed, stage of pluripotency. In vitro resetting to a more naive phenotype has been reported. However, whether the reset culture conditions of selective kinase inhibition can enable capture of naive epiblast cells directly from the embryo has not been determined. Here, we show that in these spe...

The NAD-dependent deacetylase SIRT1 is involved in chromatin silencing and genome stability. Elevated SIRT1 levels in embryonic stem cells also suggest a role for SIRT1 in pluripotency. Murine SIRT1 attenuates telomere attrition in vivo and is recruited at telomeres in induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Because telomere elongation is an iPSC hallmark, we set out to study the role of SIRT1 ...

Primordial germ cells (PGCs) are specified from epiblast cells in mice. Genes associated with naive pluripotency are repressed in the transition from inner cell mass to epiblast cells, followed by upregulation after PGC specification. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the reactivation of pluripotency genes are poorly characterized. Here, we exploited the in vitro differentiation of e...

Since the successful isolation of mouse and human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) in the past decades, massive investigations have been conducted to dissect the pluripotency network that governs the ability of these cells to differentiate into all cell types. Beside the core Oct4-Sox2-Nanog circuitry, accumulating regulators, including transcription factors, epigenetic modifiers, microRNA and signa...

Chemical biology methods such as high-throughput screening (HTS) and affinity-based target identification can be used to probe biological systems on a biomacromolecule level, providing valuable insights into the molecular mechanisms of those systems. Here, by establishing a human embryonal carcinoma cell-based HTS platform, we screened 171,077 small molecules for regulators of pluripotency and ...

Background Endometriosis is a gynecological disease defined as the presence of endometrial tissue outside the uterine cavity, which caused by various factors. Recent evidences support the presence of endometrial stem cells and their possible involvement in endometriosis. Related studies mainly focus on stemness-related genes, and pluripotency markers may play a role in the etiology of endometri...

Maintenance of undifferentiated states of pluripotent embryonic stem cells is regulated by a complex network of transcription factors and signaling pathways. Recent reports revealed that developmental pluripotency-associated 2 (Dppa2), which regulates chromatin structures, plays important roles in the maintenance of pluripotency and proliferation of embryonic stem cells. Interestingly, developm...