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The persistence of memory

Nature Medicine volume 16, pages 1082–1083 (2010)Cite this article

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Alan Trounson

The recent reports1,2 suggesting retention of epigenetic memory of the cell type of origin in iPSCs may explain their variability in differentiation capacity response to drugs and their longer-term use in cell therapy. The retention of some of the transcripts from the cell of origin is associated with commitment to lineage type of mature somatic cells. This memory decays in time with continued passage of iPSCs in culture1,2, indicating that the epigenetic regulators (methylation, acetylation and chromatin structure) associated with the adult cell type eventually reset to the pluripotent state. The methylation profile seems to reset to the pluripotential pattern in passaged iPSCs2.

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The persistence of memory. Nat Med 16, 1082–1083 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1010-1082

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1010-1082

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