Mouse embryonic stem cells stained for key pluripotency markersGRAZIANO MARTELLO Combining computer science algorithms with biological data has enabled researchers to create a model of the minimal number of factors necessary for mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs) to self-renew in culture. While scientists have long known that a group of transcription factors are needed for stem cell maintenance, the sheer number of possible interactions among them has made the question of which are essential too complicated to address in the laboratory alone.
Austin Smith of the Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute teamed up with investigators from the Microsoft Research Computational Science Laboratory, also in the U.K., to incorporate experimental data on 20 key transcription factors involved in stem cell self-renewal. The resulting model, published today (June 5) in Science, shows that an interaction network of just 12 transcription factors is all that may be needed to maintain the mouse ESC state.
“We wanted to understand how stem cell transcription factors were interconnected and explain how these cells behave in different culture conditions and still maintain the stem cell state,” said Smith. “This modeling approach allowed us to map the transcription factor connections that is consistent with experimental data.”
”The conclusion here is that the ...
