lineage conversion

[Advanced Science] The authors reported a robust method to convert fibroblasts to neurons through targeting the cytoskeleton followed by exposure to lineage-specification surroundings.

[Science Advances] Researchers demonstrated of the use of extracellular vesicles derived from ESCs undergoing cardiac differentiation as biomimetic tools to induce cardiac reprogramming with extremely high efficiency, establishing a general, more readily accessible platform for generating a variety of specialized somatic cells through direct lineage conversion.

[Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology] Investigators found a set of four defined factors that could reprogram fibroblasts into iPSCs, which were shown to be molecularly and functionally equivalent to blastocyst-derived ESCs, thus essentially showing that defined factors could induce authentic reprogramming without the need of oocytes.

[Journal of Immunology] Scientists examined the cellular and molecular elements that promote CD8-to-CD4 lineage conversion and the development of CI-Treg cells in mice.

[Blood] The authors examined the consequences of conditional inactivation of Lsd1 in adult red blood cells using a new Gata1creERT2 BAC transgene. The analogous phenotype was observed in human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, coincident with induction of myeloid transcription factors.

[Scientific Reports] The authors identified an important caveat when investigating TLR4-driven signaling in BLaER1 cells. They showed that this model contained glycosylphosphatidylinositol anchor-deficient cells, which lacked CD14 surface expression when differentiated to monocytes, resulting in diminished LPS/TLR4 but not TLR7/TLR8 responsiveness.