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Letter

Nature Cell Biology 6, 984–990 (1 October 2004) | doi:10.1038/ncb1176

DNA demethylation is necessary for the epigenetic reprogramming of somatic cell nuclei

Stina Simonsson & John Gurdon

Nuclear transplantation experiments in amphibia and mammals have shown that oocyte and egg cytoplasm can extensively reprogram somatic cell nuclei with new patterns of gene expression and new pathways of cell differentiation; however, very little is known about the molecular mechanism of nuclear reprogramming. Here we have used nuclear and DNA transfer from mammalian somatic cells to analyse the mechanism of activation of the stem cell marker gene oct4 by Xenopus oocytes.