Classical nuclear transfer papers

Transplantation of living nuclei from blastula cells into enucleated frogs' eggs. Briggs, R, King, T.J. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 38, 455–463 (1952) In this classic paper, Briggs and King lay out a technique for nuclear transfer to clone tadpoles.

The first half-century of nuclear transplantation. Gurdon, J.B., Byrne, J.A. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 100, 8048–8052 (2003) This review is written by a scientist who cloned the first frog and another who first created embryonic stem cells from cloned monkey blastocysts.

Full-term development of mice from enucleated oocytes injected with cumulus cell nuclei Wakayama, T., Perry, A.C., Zuccotti, M., Johnson, K.R., Yanagimachi, R. Nature 394, 369–374 (1998) This paper describes the cloning of the first mouse through nuclear transfer.

Using reprogramming to study cancer

Reprogramming of a melanoma genome by nuclear transplantation Hochedlinger, K., Blelloch, R., Brennan, C., Yamada, Y., Kim, M. et al. Genes Dev 18,1875–1885. (2004) This paper creates embryonic stem cells using nuclei from skin-cancer cells and shows that chimeric mice creates from these cells are prone to cancer.

Mouse embryos cloned from brain tumors Li, L., Connelly, M.C., Wetmore, C., Curran, T., Morgan, J.I. Cancer Res 63, 2733–2736. (2003) This paper shows that cloned embryos containing nuclei from medulloblastoma cells can grow into embryos that develop the three germ layers.

The nature of pluripotency and embryonic stem cells

A protein interaction network for pluripotency of embryonic stem cells Wang, J., Rao, S., Chu, J., Shen, X., Levasseur, D.N. et al. Nature 444, 364–368. (2006) This paper identifies protein binding to Nanog, indicating that pluripotency is maintained through a complex network.

A germ cell origin of embryonic stem cells? Zwaka, T.P., Thomson, J.A. Development 132, 227–233. (2005) This paper questions whether embryonic stem cells might be an artifact of culture.