When embryonic stem cells (ESCs) differentiate, they must both silence the ESC self-renewal program and activate new tissue-specific programs. In the absence of DGCR8 (Dgcr8(-/-)), a protein required for microRNA (miRNA) biogenesis, mouse ESCs are unable to silence self-renewal. Here we show that the introduction of let-7 miRNAs-a family of miRNAs highly expressed in somatic cells-can suppress self-renewal in Dgcr8(-/-) but not wild-type ESCs. Introduction of ESC cell cycle regulating (ESCC) miRNAs into the Dgcr8(-/-) ESCs blocks the capacity of let-7 to suppress self-renewal. Profiling and bioinformatic analyses show that let-7 inhibits whereas ESCC miRNAs indirectly activate numerous self-renewal genes. Furthermore, inhibition of the let-7 family promotes de-differentiation of somatic cells to induced pluripotent stem cells. Together, these findings show how the ESCC and let-7 miRNAs act through common pathways to alternatively stabilize the self-renewing versus differentiated cell fates.
Pubmed ID: 20054295 RIS Download
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Biomedical and genomic research center located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Nonprofit research organization under the name Broad Institute Inc., and is partners with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the five Harvard teaching hospitals. Dedicated to advance understanding of biology and treatment of human disease to improve human health.
View all literature mentionsSoftware tool as partner script to the popular ncbi-genome-download script. Allows to download sequences from GenBank/RefSeq by accession through the NCBI ENTREZ API.
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