Sox2

[Cell Death & Disease] Aberrant expression of paired-related homeobox1 (Prrx1) has been functionally associated with cancer stem cells including glioma stem cells. Prrx1 was found to be markedly upregulated in glioma specimens and elevated Prrx1 expression was inversely correlated with prognosis of glioma patients.

[Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America] Scientists examined epigenome remodeling at the onset of human nuclear reprogramming by profiling human fibroblasts after fusion with murine ESCs. Efficient reprogramming of human fibroblasts to iPSCs was achieved by transduction with vectors expressing SOX2, KLF4, and inducible dnAP-1, demonstrating that dnAP-1 can substitute for exogenous human OCT4.

[Biomedical Microdevices] Scientists differentiated human ESCs to early cardiac mesodermal cells in microfluidic chambers that had a volume of only 30 nanoliters, using discontinuous medium perfusion. To confirm cell pluripotency, they tracked hESC proliferation and immunostained the cells for pluripotency markers SOX2 and OCT3/4.

[Nature Communications] Using a highly parallelized approach to investigate pioneer transcription factor (PF) ability to bind methylated DNA and induce DNA demethylation, researchers showed the complex interdependence between DNA methylation and transcription factor binding; while some PFs did not affect the methylation status of their binding sites, they identified PFs that could protect DNA from methylation and others that could induce DNA demethylation at methylated binding sites.

[Cell Proliferation] The authors identified a putative CSC population in immortalized and primary human ameloblastoma cells and examined possible therapeutic reagents to reduce the CSC population.

[Nature Communications] Scientists demonstrated that local expression of the Yamanaka reprogramming factors, specifically in myofibers, induced the activation of muscle stem cells or satellite cells, which accelerated muscle regeneration in young mice.