Letter to the Editor

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Two-step generation of induced pluripotent stem cells from mouse fibroblasts using Id3 and Oct4 Free
Jai-Hee Moon1,†, June Seok Heo1,2,†, Suhyun Kwon1, Jihyun Kim1, Jihye Hwang1, Phil Jun Kang1, Aeree Kim3, Hyun Ok Kim2, Kwang Youn Whang4, Byung Sun Yoon1,*, and Seungkwon You1,*
1Laboratory of Cell Function Regulation, College of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
2Cell Therapy Center, College of Medicine, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
3Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, Korea University Guro Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea
4Division of Biotechnology, College of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea *Correspondence to:Byung Sun Yoon, E-mail: biosun302@korea.ac.kr; Seungkwon You, E-mail: bioseung@korea.ac.kr
J Mol Cell Biol, Volume 4, Issue 1, February 2012, 59-62,  

Somatic cells can be reprogrammed into pluripotent stem cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), by defined transcription factors (Takahashi et al., 2006). The reprogramming of somatic cells may be a continuous stochastic process in which nearly all somatic donor cells have the ability to give rise to iPSCs with continuous passaging and the expression of defined factors (Hanna et al., 2009). However, the reprogramming process can be divided into discrete stages, including the generation of dedifferentiated pre-pluripotent cells followed by authentic pluripotent cells (Silva et al., 2009). The sequential expression of marker genes, such as AP, SSEA1, and Oct4 or Nanog, has been demonstrated during the reprogramming process (Brambrink et al., 2008). Neural stem cells (NSCs) endogenously express SSEA1 and exhibit AP activity (Kim et al., 2009), suggesting that NSCs are a quasi-intermediate state and might represent a more advanced stage in the reprogramming process compared with terminally differentiated cells. Subsequently, iPSCs have been generated from NSCs using Oct4 alone (Kim et al., 2009).