The Pax6 gene plays an important role in eye morphogenesis throughout the animal kingdom. The Pax6 gene and its homologue could form ectopic eyes by targeted expression in Drosophila and Xenopus. Thus, this gene is a master gene for the eye morphogenesis at least in these animals. In the early development of the vertebrate eye, Pax6 is required for the instruction of multipotential progenitor c...

The embryonic chick has the ability to regenerate its retina after it has been completely removed. Here, we provide a detailed characterization of retina regeneration in the embryonic chick at the cellular level. Retina regeneration can occur in two distinct manners. The first is via transdifferentiation, which is induced by members of the Fibroblast growth factor (Fgf) family. The second type ...

Skeletal muscle cell-derived grafts in the heart may benefit myocardial performance after infarction. Several studies have suggested that skeletal muscle stem cells (satellite cells) from adult muscle undergo transdifferentiation into cardiomyocytes after grafting into the heart, but expression of cardiac markers in graft cells has not been rigorously confirmed. To determine the fate of satelli...

Highly malignant tumors mostly consist of rapidly proliferating cells. However, tumors also contain a few cells in a quiescent state that can be characterized as slow-cycling, expressing markers of stem cells and possessing the ability to initiate new tumors. These quiescent cells, now generally termed 'cancer stem cells' (CSC) (or 'cancer initiating cells'), are capable of regenerating the ent...

Intrauterine adhesions (IUA) may be caused by endometrial stromal cell proliferation, increases in myofibroblasts or increases in extracellular matrix secretion. However, the specific mechanisms underlying the development of IUA have yet to be elucidated. The present study identified that angiotensin (Ang) II is capable of promoting endometrial epithelium cell (EEC) proliferation and the transd...

Tumor cells actively contribute to constructing their own microenvironment during tumorigenesis and tumor progression. The tumor microenvironment contains multiple types of stromal cells that work together with the extracellular matrix and local and systemic factors to coordinately contribute to tumor initiation and progression. Tumor cells and their stromal compartments acquire many genetic an...

The positive regulatory domain containing 16 (PRDM16) is commonly regarded as a "switch" controlling the transdifferentiation of myoblasts to brown adipocytes. The N-positive regulatory (PR) domain, which is highly homologous to SET domain, is a characteristic structure for the PRDM family. Many SET domain containing proteins and several PRDM members have been found to possess histone methyltra...

OBJECTIVE Transdifferentiation of fibroblasts to endothelial cells (ECs) may provide a novel therapeutic avenue for diseases, including ischemia and fibrosis. Here, we demonstrate that human fibroblasts can be transdifferentiated into functional ECs by using only 2 factors, Oct4 and Klf4, under inductive signaling conditions. APPROACH AND RESULTS To determine whether human fibroblasts could b...

BACKGROUND Bone marrow stromal stem cells (BMSC) are appropriate source of multipotent stem cells that are ideally suited for use in various cell-based therapies. It can be differentiated into neuronal-like cells under appropriate conditions. This study examined the effectiveness of co-stimulation of creatine and retinoic acid in increasing the differentiation of BMSC into GABAergic neuron-like...

Terminally differentiated post-mitotic cells are generally considered irreversibly developmentally locked, i.e. incapable of being reprogrammed in vivo into entirely different cell types. We found that brief expression of a single transcription factor, the ELT-7 GATA factor, can convert the identity of fully differentiated, highly specialized non-endodermal cells of the pharynx into fully diffe...