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Is REST a regulator of pluripotency?

Nature volume 457, pages E5–E6 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Arising from: S. K. Singh, M. N. Kagalwala, J. Parker-Thornburg, H. Adams & S. Majumder Nature 453, 223–227 (2008)10.1038/nature06863; Singh et al. reply

Establishment and maintenance of the pluripotent state of ESCs is a key issue in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, and consequently identification of transcription factors that regulate ESC pluripotency is an important goal. Singh et al.1 claim that the transcriptional repressor REST is such a regulator and that a 50% reduction of REST in ESCs leads to activation of a specific microRNA, miR-21, and that this subsequently results in loss of pluripotency markers and a reciprocal gain in some lineage-specific differentiation markers. In contrast, we show that, in haplodeficient Rest+/- ESCs, we detected no change in pluripotency markers, no precocious expression of differentiated neuronal markers and no interaction of REST with miR-21. It is vital that identification of factors that regulate pluripotency is based on robust, consistent data, and the contrast in data reported here undermines the claim by Singh et al.1 that REST is such a regulator.

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Figure 1: Rest +/- ESCs retain pluripotent markers and show no precocious induction of neural marker genes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. * King’s College London, Institute of Psychiatry, Centre for the Cellular Basis of Behaviour, James Black Centre, 125 Coldharbour Lane, London SE5 9NU, UK. noel.buckley@iop.kcl.ac.uk ,

    Noel J. Buckley & Yuh-Man Sun

  2. † Stem Cell and Developmental Biology, Genome Institute of Singapore, 60 Biopolis Street #02-01, Genome Building, Singapore 138672 ,

    Rory Johnson & Lawrence W. Stanton

Authors
  1. Noel J. Buckley
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  2. Rory Johnson
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Buckley, N., Johnson, R., Sun, YM. et al. Is REST a regulator of pluripotency?. Nature 457, E5–E6 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07784

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