Self-renewal articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article |

    Single-cell analysis in a mouse model of skin stretching shows that stretching causes a transient expansion bias in a population of epidermal stem cells, which is associated with chromatin remodelling and changes in transcriptional profiles.

    • Mariaceleste Aragona
    • , Alejandro Sifrim
    •  & Cédric Blanpain
  • Article |

    MLLT3 is identified as a crucial regulator of the self-renewal of human haematopoietic stem cells, and helps to maintain an active chromatin state in haematopoietic stem-cell regulatory genes during culture.

    • Vincenzo Calvanese
    • , Andrew T. Nguyen
    •  & Hanna K. A. Mikkola
  • Article |

    Lung alveoli are lined by two types of alveolar epithelial cells, squamous alveolar type (AT) 1 cells that mediate gas exchange and cuboidal AT2 cells that secrete surfactant to prevent alveolar collapse during breathing; here alveolar markers, genetic lineage tracing and clonal analysis are used in mice to identify alveolar progenitor and stem cells in vivo, and to map their locations and potential during lung development, maintenance and cancer.

    • Tushar J. Desai
    • , Douglas G. Brownfield
    •  & Mark A. Krasnow
  • Letter |

    It is known that human embryonic stem (ES) cells are more similar to mouse primed epiblast stem cells than to naive mouse ES cells; here culture conditions are determined that allow human ES and induced pluripotent stem cells to acquire a pluripotent state that retains growth characteristics highly similar to mouse naive ES cells, and competence in generating cross-species human-mouse embryonic chimaerism.

    • Ohad Gafni
    • , Leehee Weinberger
    •  & Jacob H. Hanna
  • Article |

    This study shows that the combination of naive pluripotency growth conditions, Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and Myc (OSKM) overexpression, and depleting the Mbd3/NuRD co-repressor results in deterministic and synchronized reprogramming to pluripotency.

    • Yoach Rais
    • , Asaf Zviran
    •  & Jacob H. Hanna
  • Letter |

    Under stress conditions such as acute blood loss or chronic anaemia, glucocorticoids trigger self-renewal of early burst-forming unit–erythroid (BFU–E) progenitors in the spleen, however, the mechanism of glucocorticoid action is not well understood; here the RNA binding protein ZFP36L2 is identified as a transcriptional target of the glucocorticoid receptor in BFU-Es and is shown to be involved in the process of erythroid cell expansion following exposure to glucocorticoids.

    • Lingbo Zhang
    • , Lina Prak
    •  & Harvey F. Lodish
  • Letter |

    During normal ageing a low rate of division of pre-existing cardiomyocytes, rather than progenitor cells, is responsible for cardiomyocyte genesis; this process is increased fourfold during myocardial infarction.

    • Samuel E. Senyo
    • , Matthew L. Steinhauser
    •  & Richard T. Lee
  • Letter |

    The pancreatic lineage is used as a model for embryonic-stem-cell differentiation, and shows that co-culture with organ-matched mesenchyme permits proliferation and self-renewal of progenitors, enabling an expansion of more than a million-fold for human endodermal cells with full retention of developmental potential.

    • Julie B. Sneddon
    • , Malgorzata Borowiak
    •  & Douglas A. Melton
  • Letter |

    In the adult brain, neural stem cells (NSCs) and neural progenitor cells (NPCs) are maintained in the subventricular zone. There, the Notch protein regulates the identity and self-renewal of NSCs, while epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) affects NPC proliferation and migration. Now it is found that these signalling pathways interact to maintain the balance between NSC and NPC populations.

    • Adan Aguirre
    • , Maria E. Rubio
    •  & Vittorio Gallo
  • Letter |

    TET1 is an enzyme that catalyses the conversion of 5-methylcytosine of DNA to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine, raising the possibility that it is involved in mediating DNA demethylation. These authors show that Tet1 is involved in mouse embryonic stem cell maintenance and specification of the inner cell mass. It is required to maintain both the expression of Nanog in embryonic stem cells and the Nanog promoter in a hypomethylated state, supporting a role for Tet1 in regulating DNA methylation.

    • Shinsuke Ito
    • , Ana C. D’Alessio
    •  & Yi Zhang
  • Letter |

    Progenitor cells sustain the capacity of self-renewing tissues for proliferation while suppressing cell cycle exit and terminal differentiation. DNA methylation is one potential epigenetic mechanism for the cellular memory needed to preserve the somatic progenitor state through cell divisions. The DNA methyltransferase 1 and other regulators of DNA methylation are now shown to be essential for epidermal progenitor cell function.

    • George L. Sen
    • , Jason A. Reuter
    •  & Paul A. Khavari
  • Article |

    The differentiation of an embryonic stem cell (ESC) requires both suppression of the self-renewal process and activation of the specific differentiation pathway. The let-7 family of microRNAs (miRNAs) are now shown to suppress the self-renewal program in cells that are normally unable to silence this program, whereas introduction of ESC cell cycle regulating miRNAs blocks the action of let-7. Thus, the interplay between these two groups of miRNAs dictates cell fate.

    • Collin Melton
    • , Robert L. Judson
    •  & Robert Blelloch