BACKGROUND The hierarchical organization of hematopoiesis with unidirectional lineage determination has become a questionable tenet in view of the experimental evidence of reprogramming and transdifferentiation of lineage-determined cells. Clinical examples of hematopoietic lineage plasticity are rare. Here we report on a patient who presented with an acute B-lymphoblastic leukemia and develope...

PURPOSE To elucidate the early cellular events that take place during induction of retina regeneration in the embryonic chick, focusing on the relationship between fibroblast growth factor (FGF) signaling and the regulation of Pax6 and Mitf. METHODS The retina of embryonic day 4 (E4) chicks was removed and a heparin coated bead soaked in fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) was placed into the o...

Lineage-specific transcription factors (TFs) display instructive roles in directly reprogramming adult cells into alternate developmental fates, in a process known as transdifferentiation. The present study analyses the hypothesis that despite being fast, transdifferentiation does not occur in one step but is rather a consecutive and hierarchical process. Using ectopic expression of Pdx1 in hum...

Previous studies of the human neuroblastoma cell line SK-N-SH had demonstrated the presence of and phenotypic interconversion (transdifferentiation) between two morphologically and biochemically distinct cell types: N (neuroblastic) cells with properties of noradrenergic neurons and S (substrate-adherent) cells with properties of melanocytes. Current studies have sought to test the generality o...

Pancreatic acinar cells AR42J-B13 can transdifferentiate into hepatocyte-like cells permissive for efficient hepatitis B virus (HBV) replication. Here, we profiled miRNAs differentially expressed in AR42J-B13 cells before and after transdifferentiation to hepatocytes, using chip-based microarray. Significant increase of miRNA expression, including miR-21, miR-22, and miR-122a, was confirmed by ...

Forced expression of lineage-specific transcription factors in somatic cells can result in the generation of different cell types in a process named direct reprogramming, bypassing the pluripotent state. However, the introduction of transgenes limits the therapeutic applications of the produced cells. Numerous small-molecules have been introduced in the field of stem cell biology capable of gov...

Transdifferentiation is a process whereby one cell type committed to and progressing along a specific developmental lineage switches into another cell type of a different lineage through genetic reprogramming. Even though this process has been well studied and established in amphibian systems, it is unclear if mammalian cells possess the same potential. Recent in vivo transplantation studies sh...