Mouse embryonic fibroblastsWIKIMEDIA, BOZONHIGGSAA form of CRISPR that activates rather than cuts DNA can convert embryonic mouse cells to induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs), researchers reported last week (January 18) in Cell Stem Cell.
“This paper demonstrates the ability of CRISPR effectors to go beyond turning on a single gene and completely rewire the transcriptional state of the cell,” Neville Sanjana, a bioengineer at the New York Genome Institute who did not participate in the study, writes in an email to The Scientist.
To generate induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs), researchers have traditionally overexpressed the genes for four transcription factors: Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc. But in the new study, researchers made iPSCs from mouse embryonic fibroblasts by using an epigenetic CRISPR technique to switch on an endogenous copy of just one transcription factor—either Sox2 or Oct4.
Sheng Ding, a stem cell biologist at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease and the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues ...
