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Letter

Nature Genetics 37, 1099–1103 (1 October 2005) | doi:10.1038/ng1631

Genomic alterations in cultured human embryonic stem cells

Anirban Maitra , Dan E Arking , Narayan Shivapurkar , Morna Ikeda , Victor Stastny , Keyaunoosh Kassauei , Guoping Sui , David J Cutler , Ying Liu , Sandii N Brimble , Karin Noaksson , Johan Hyllner , Thomas C Schulz , Xianmin Zeng , William J Freed , Jeremy Crook , Suman Abraham , Alan Colman , Peter Sartipy , Sei-Ichi Matsui , Melissa Carpenter , Adi F Gazdar , Mahendra Rao & Aravinda Chakravarti

Cultured human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines are an invaluable resource because they provide a uniform and stable genetic system for functional analyses and therapeutic applications. Nevertheless, these dividing cells, like other cells, probably undergo spontaneous mutation at a rate of 10|[minus]|9 per nucleotide.