Comparison of reprogramming ability of mouse ES and iPS cells measured by somatic cell fusion

Abstract

The ectopic expression of the key transcription factors Oct4, Sox2, c-Myc, and Klf-4 have been shown to reprogram somatic cells to a pluripotent state. In turn these induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, like embryonic stem (ES) cells, have been shown to be able to reprogram somatic cells by cell fusion. In this study we compare the differences and similarities between ES and iPS cells measured by somatic cell fusion to somatic cells harboring an Oct4-GFP transgene. We found that iPS cells were just as potent as ES cells at reprogramming the somatic genome as measured by Oct4-GFP reactivation. The resulting ES-somatic and iPS-somatic cell hybrids were characterized for expression of key pluripotency genes, immunostaining for Oct4, SSEA-1, and the ability to differentiate into cell types representative of the three germ layers. In addition to restoring pluripotency to the somatic genome following cell fusion, the telomere maintenance mechanisms of both the ES and iPS cells were found to be dominant in the resulting ES-somatic and iPS-somatic cell hybrids, resulting in the lengthening of the somatic telomeres following cellular reprogramming. Therefore this study supports the view that iPS cells can be virtually indistinguishable from ES cells, even with regard to their reprogramming ability.

The Oct4 promoter-EGFP transgenic rabbit: a new model for monitoring the pluripotency of rabbit stem cells

“…Within a year, human iPS cell lines were created using the same technology (Takahashi et al, 2007). Now iPS cells have been successfully produced from many other species (Ezashi et al, 2009, Honda et al, 2010, Liu et al, 2008, Sumer et al, 2010. Further improvements in ES and iPS cell techniques will enable cell-based therapies to be developed (Grigoriadis et al, 2010, Zou et al, 2011.…”

Trend of telomerase activity change during human iPSC self-renewal and differentiation revealed by a quartz crystal microbalance based assay

“…Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) with a high differentiation potential provides a new source for regenerative medicine and it shares comparative high-level telomerase activity with human embryonic stem cells (hESCs)8. Recently, hiPSCs is emerging as an important new tool to be applied in drug screening and treatment of human diseases91011.…”

Somatic cell reprogrammed by oocyte: process and barricade

“…Therefore, the total efficiency of generating mouse ESCs lines from SCNT-derived embryos was approximately 2.7%. While the efficiency of generating mouse ES cell lines through somatic cell-ESCs fusion was 0.0114% (Sumer et al 2010), only approximately 0.01% of mouse fibroblasts were reprogrammed into iPSCs when only Thomson factors were retroviral delivered (Takahashi & Yamanaka 2006). The third is that oocyte-mediated reprogramming is faster than the methods of iPSCs and somatic cells-ESCs fusion.…”