Source: Baylor College of Medicine
Date: October 13, 2011
Summary:
HOUSTON -- Ordinarily, embryonic stem cells exist only a day or two as they begin the formation of the embryo itself. Then they are gone. In the laboratory dish, however, they act more like perpetual stem cells – renewing themselves and exhibiting the ability to form cells of almost any type, a status called totipotency.
Scientists at Baylor College of Medicine showed that laboratory-grown cells express a protein called Blimp1, which represses differentiation to somatic or regular tissue cells during germ cell development. Studies of these cells show that they also express other genes associated with early germ cell specification. A report on their work published online today in the journal Current Biology. It will appear in the Oct. 25 print edition of the journal.
