Abstract:

During 2008 to 2011, affiliated project of genetic development and reproductive medicine key discipline— research project on molecular mechanisms controlling self-renewal and differentiation of embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells, which was funded by 211 Project at the third stage, had gained many results, including establishment of the profiling of human embryos during early organogenesis; discovery of calcineurin-NFAT signaling critically regulating early lineage specification in mouse embryonic stem cells and embryos. Moreover, the regulatory mechanism of Oct4-centered core transcriptional circuitry for ES cell fate decision is elucidated: investigating the posttranslational modification of key transcription factor Oct4; discovering PARP1 Poly(ADP-ribosyl)ates Sox2 to control Sox2 protein levels and FGF4 expression during embryonic stem cell differentiation; finding that coactivator p300 in mouse embryonic stem cell differentiation and nanog expression have critical roles; demonstrating that Stk40 links the pluripotency factor Oct4 to the Erk/MAPK pathway and controls extraembryonic endoderm differentiation. In addition, the project discovers that Ly-1 antibody reactive clone is an important nucleolar protein for control of self-renewal and differentiation in embryonic stem cells. In 2011, the project of “Research of embryonic stem cell and early embryonic developmental molecular mechanism” received an award from Ministry of Education of Higher Education Scientific Research for the excellent achievement, the second prize of the natural science.

Key words: stem cells, mechanism research, scientific research achievements