Homologous genes have recently been shown to regulate stem cell maintenance in animals and plants. This discovery should facilitate elucidation of the poorly understood factors that control stem cell maintenance and differentiation.

Because of their capability of differentiation into lineage-specific cells, stem cells are an attractive therapeutic modality in regenerative medicine. To develop an effective stem cell-based therapeutic strategy with predictable results, deeper understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms of stem cell differentiation and/or pluripotency maintenance is required. Thus, reviewing the key ...

Flowering plants have the unique ability to produce new organs continuously, for hundreds of years in some species, from stem cell populations maintained at their actively growing tips. The shoot tip is called the shoot apical meristem, and it acts as a self-renewing source of undifferentiated, pluripotent stem cells whose descendents become incorporated into organ and tissue primordia and acqu...

objectives: long non-coding rnas (lncrnas), a vast class of recently discovered non-coding genes in the human genome, have been implicated in the regulation of several biological processes, including the maintenance of stem cell pluripotency and neurogenesis. new evidences have emerged that some long incrnas act as enhancers for their neighboring genes. oct4, also known as pou5f1 and oct3/4, fu...

Wnt signaling is a conserved regulator of stem cell behaviors, and the Drosophila germarium has been an important model tissue for the study of stem cell maintenance, differentiation, and proliferation. Here we review Wnt signaling in the germarium, which houses two distinct types of ovarian stem cells: the anteriorly located germline stem cells (GSCs), which give rise to oocytes; and the mid-p...

Plants maintain stem cells in their meristems as a source for new undifferentiated cells throughout their life. Meristems are small groups of cells that provide the microenvironment that allows stem cells to prosper. Homeostasis of a stem cell domain within a growing meristem is achieved by signalling between stem cells and surrounding cells. We have here simulated the origin and maintenance of...

conclusions our data suggest that preconditioning with 5 μm h2o2 + 0.5% fbs and 10 μm h2o2 + 5% fbs improved cell proliferation and viability. however, the mechanisms related to protective properties of preconditioning and using this strategy in stem cell therapy requires more research. background mesenchymal stem cells (mscs) survival decreased following in vivo injection and its application h...

background: due to increasing clinical demand for adipose tissue, a suitable cell for reconstructive adipose tissue constructs is needed. in this study, we investigated the ability of human endometrial-derived stem cells (enscs) as a new source of mesenchymal stem cells to differentiate into adipocytes. enscs are the abundant and easy available source with no immunological response, for cell re...

Floral stem cells produce a defined number of floral organs before ceasing to be maintained as stem cells. Therefore, floral stem cells offer an ideal model to study the temporal control of stem cell maintenance within a developmental context. AGAMOUS (AG), a MADS domain transcription factor essential for the termination of floral stem cell fate, has long been thought to repress the stem cell m...