< Back to Core

Chapter 43

Embryonic and Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

Embryonic stem (ES) cells were first discovered in mice in 1981 by Martin Evans. In 1998, James Thomson identified a method to isolate embryonic stem …
Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that divide and produce different cell types. Ordinarily, cells that have differentiated into a specific cell type …
The cells of the blastocyst inner cell mass only remain pluripotent for a short time. This state of pluripotency and self-renewal can be maintained in …
Reprogramming alters the gene expression in somatic cells, transforming them into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells over several generations. …
Chromatin modification alters gene expression; therefore, scientists can add histone-modifying enzymes, histone variants, and chromatin remodeling …
The ability of induced pluripotent stem cells or iPSCs to differentiate into most body cell types has stimulated repair and regenerative medicine research …
Transdifferentiation, also known as lineage reprogramming, was first discovered by Selman and Kafatos in 1974 in silkmoths. They observed that the …
Embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells are excellent models for disease research because of their ability to self-renew and differentiate into most …
In 2006, Yamanaka and colleagues first demonstrated that retrovirus-mediated delivery and expression of Oct4, Sox2, c-Myc and Klf4 is capable of inducing …
Human embryonic stem cells (hESC) can self-renew indefinitely in vitro, and with the appropriate cues can be induced to differentiate into potentially all …
Human pluripotent stem cells can differentiate into various cell types that can be applied to human-based in vitro toxicity assays. One major advantage is …