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Comment
. 2012 Jun 13;31(12):2747-9.
doi: 10.1038/emboj.2012.131. Epub 2012 May 4.

A lack of commitment for over 500 million years: conserved animal stem cell pluripotency

A Aziz Aboobaker  1 , Damian Kao
Affiliations
Comment

A lack of commitment for over 500 million years: conserved animal stem cell pluripotency

A Aziz Aboobaker et al. EMBO J. .

Abstract

Stem cells, both adult and germline, are the key cells underpinning animal evolution. Yet, surprisingly little is known about the evolution of their shared key feature: pluripotency. Now using genome-wide expression profiling of pluripotent planarian adult stem cells (pASCs), Önal et al (2012) present evidence for deep molecular conservation of pluripotency. They characterise the expression profile of pASCs and identify conserved expression profiles and functions for genes required for mammalian pluripotency. Their analyses suggest that molecular pluripotency mechanisms may be conserved, and tantalisingly that pluripotency in germ stem cells (GSCs) and somatic stem cells (SSCs) may have had shared common evolutionary origins.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Önal et al (2012) sorted planarian cells into irradiation sensitive proliferative cells (X1, red box), cells with higher nuclear to cytoplasm ratio (X2, green box) and irradiation insensitive cells (Xins, blue box). Proteomic and RNAseq analysis allowed them to identify pASC expression profile. Solana et al combined RNAi of Histone-2B to ablate stem cells and irradiation followed by RNAseq.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

References

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