Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS cell) holds great potential for applications in regenerative medicine, drug discovery, and disease modeling. We describe here a practical method to generate human iPS cells from urine-derived cells (UCs) under feeder-free, virus-free, serum-free condition and without oncogene c-MYC. We showed that this approach could be applied in a large population with different genetic backgrounds. UCs are easily accessible and exhibit high reprogramming efficiency, offering advantages over other cell types used for the purpose of iPS generation. Using the approach described in this study, we have generated 93 iPS cell lines from 20 donors with diverse genetic backgrounds. The non-viral iPS cell bank with these cell lines provides a valuable resource for iPS cells research, facilitating future applications of human iPS cells.

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Abstract. Plant carbon (C) content is one of the most important plant traits and is critical in the assessment of global C cycle and ecological stoichiometry. However, the global variation in plant C content remains poorly understood. We conducted a global analysis of the plant C content by synthesizing data from 4318 species to provide specific values of C content and to assess their variation across plant organs and life forms. Our results showed that C content varied markedly across plant organs. Plant organ C content ranged from 45.01 % in reproductive organs to 47.88 % in stems at global scales, which were significantly lower than a canonical value of 50 % that has been widely employed in previous studies. Plant C content in leaves was higher than that in roots. Across life forms, woody plants exhibited higher C content than herbaceous plants. Conifers, relative to broad-leaved woody species, had higher C content in roots, leaves and stems. Plant C content tended to decrease with the increasing latitude. The life form explained more variation of the C content than climate due to plant structural requirements. Our findings suggest that specific C content values from different organs and life forms may be more suitable to evaluate global vegetation C stock and plant ecological stoichiometry.</p>

Urine cells, a body trash, have been successfully reprogrammed into human induced pluripotent stem cells (U-hiPSCs) which hold a huge promise in regenerative medicine. However, it is unknown whether or to what extent U-hiPSCs can generate retinal cells so far. With a modified retinal differentiation protocol without addition of retinoic acid (RA), our study revealed that U-hiPSCs were able to differentiate towards retinal fates and form 3D retinal organoids containing laminated neural retina with all retinal cell types located in proper layer as in vivo. More importantly, U-hiPSCs generated highly mature photoreceptors with all subtypes, even red/green cone-rich photoreceptors. Our data indicated that a supplement of RA to culture medium was not necessary for maturation and specification of U-hiPSC-derived photoreceptors at least in the niche of retinal organoids. The success of retinal differentiation with U-hiPSCs provides many opportunities in cell therapy, disease modeling, and drug screening, especially in personalized medicine of retinal diseases since urine cells can be noninvasively collected from patients and their relatives.