embryonic stem cells (escs) are pluripotent, self-renewing cells. these cells can be used in applications such as cell therapy, drug discovery, disease modelling, and the study of cellular differentiation. in this experimental study embryonic stem cells cultured in the laboratory and were amplified. total rna was extracted from cells and converted to cdna by reverse transcription-polymerase cha...

The transcriptional regulator CITED2 is essential for heart development. Here, we investigated the role of CITED2 in the specification of cardiac cell fate from mouse embryonic stem cells (ESC). The overexpression of CITED2 in undifferentiated ESC was sufficient to promote cardiac cell emergence upon differentiation. Conversely, the depletion of Cited2 at the onset of differentiation resulted i...

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) hold great therapeutic promise for the regeneration of functional cell types and clinical applications. However, tumorigenic potential of stem cells in a transplanted host remains a major obstacle. In this issue of the JCI, Cui and colleagues identified TCF7-mediated canonical WNT signaling as a critical determinant of both the tumorigenicity and therapeutic function...

This book explores improved, extended, and fully updated protocols for embryonic stem cell (ESC) research in a variety of contexts.

The use of somatic cells to generate induced-pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which have gene characteristic resembling those of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), has opened up a new avenue to produce patient-specific stem cells for regenerative medicine. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have gained much attention over the past few years due to their pivotal role in many biological activites, including meta...

BACKGROUND Differentiation of pluripotent stem cells in vitro provides a powerful means to investigate early developmental fates, including hematopoiesis. In particular, the use of a fully defined medium (FDM) would avoid biases induced by unidentified factors contained in serum, and would also allow key molecular mediators involved in such a process to be identified. Our goal was to induce in ...

Human embryonic stem cells (ESC) are undifferentiated and are endowed with the capacities of self-renewal and pluripotential differentiation. Adult stem cells renew their own tissue, but whether they can transdifferentiate to other tissues is still controversial. To understand the genetic program that underlies the pluripotency of stem cells, we compared the transcription profile of ESC with th...

Pluripotent stem cells possess the capacity for self-renewal and the ability to differentiate into all cell types of the three embryonic germ layers. Accordingly, given their potential use in regenerative medicine, they have long attracted the attention of researchers. Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) represent the model pluripotent stem cell population. However, the use of ESCs in regenerative ther...

The maintenance of pluripotency and specification of cellular lineages during embryonic development are controlled by transcriptional regulatory networks, which coordinate specific sets of genes through both activation and repression. The transcriptional repressor RE1-silencing transcription factor (REST) plays important but distinct regulatory roles in embryonic (ESC) and neural (NSC) stem cel...