体细胞重编程逆转为干细胞的研究进展

目前细胞和发育生物学上的研究成果为生物医学研究提供了广泛的前景.将完全分化的细胞重编程,不经过胚胎逆转为多能干细胞状态,这点燃了再生医学应用的新希望,这一成果从法律、道德、伦理等不同方面被人们所接受.通过体细胞克隆胚胎获得干细胞所面临的破坏胚胎的伦理限制,促使研究者去寻求将分化细胞重编程逆转为干细胞的新方法.主要论述了体细胞重编程的原理、过程及不经过胚胎逆转为多能干细胞的方法.     

体细胞重编程为多潜能干细胞的研究进展

人类的胚胎干细胞（embryonic stem cells,ES cells）可以用来治疗很多疾病,但是如果通过核移植来获得与供体或者患者相匹配的ES细胞,就会受到人卵母细胞来源等条件的制约。这就促使了将体细胞重编程为多潜能细胞这样一种技术策略的发展,其中包括将分化细胞与ES细胞融合,在卵细胞、ES细胞或多潜能癌细胞的抽提物中孵育,强制多潜能因子过表达等具体的方法。通过这些途径引出了一些核功能的重编程以及相应的DNA甲基化修饰、组蛋白翻译后修饰,使体细胞表达特定的多潜能因子,转变为类似胚胎干细胞的多潜能细胞。     

帕金森病的细胞治疗研究进展

干细胞为治疗帕金森病提供了新的希望.目前用于研究的干细胞主要有神经干细胞、胚胎干细胞、诱导多功能干细胞、间充质干细胞等.本文回顾了上述细胞在移植治疗帕金森病研究中的进展,并介绍了近期出现的将体细胞直接重编程为神经细胞或神经干细胞的新技术.     

体细胞核重编程中表观遗传学的研究进展

促使体细胞核重编程的方法很多,除了传统的体细胞核移植方法外,科学家们努力寻求从法律、道德、伦理等方面更易被人们接受的新方法.近年来多能干细胞与体细胞融合、多能细胞的抽提物与体细胞共孵育以及将编码多潜能因子的基因导入体细胞中等方法都能使体细胞核发生重新编程,将已分化的体细胞转变为一种全能的胚胎状态.主要论述了生殖细胞及早期胚胎、体细胞核移植和其他形式的体细胞核重编程的表观遗传学的改变,对表观遗传学的深入研究将有助于我们进一步了解体细胞核重编程的机制,从而不断完善各种技术促进供体核的重新编程,使其更好地应用于基础研究和生产实践.     

治疗性克隆与体细胞重编程：殊途同归

治疗性克隆和体细胞重编程是制备患者特异性自体干细胞的两种不同策略,近期已取得了重大的研究进展.治疗性克隆是通过体细胞核移植后形成克隆囊胚进而获得胚胎干细胞,体细胞重编程则是将特异性转录因子导入到体细胞核中而建立诱导性多潜能干细胞(induced pluripotent stem cells,iPS细胞).两者在方法学路径、技术难题、伦理争议等方面各不相同,但在应用研究层面上都涉及到干细胞的定向诱导分化、细胞移植治疗等相同的问题.本文总结了这两种生物技术的研究进展及其异同点.     

诱导多能干细胞及其在神经退行性疾病研究中的应用

用干细胞转录因子OCT4、SOX2、c-MYC和KLF4进行体细胞重编程产生具有胚胎干细胞特性的诱导多能干细胞(iPS细胞)是干细胞研究领域的突破性进展。近年来,iPS细胞的研究从产生方法、重编程机理及实际应用方面不断取得进展。由于iPS细胞的产生可取自体细胞,因而克服了胚胎干细胞应用的伦理学和免疫排斥等缺陷,为iPS细胞的临床应用开辟了广阔的前景。该文将对iPS细胞的产生方法、重编程机理及其在神经性退行性疾病的研究与应用进行文献综述,反映近几年iPS细胞最新研究成果,并阐述了用病人iPS细胞模型探讨帕金森氏病、老年性痴呆症、脊髓侧索硬化症、脊髓肌肉萎缩症及舞蹈症等5种常见神经性退行性疾病发病机理的研究现状。     

体细胞核移植后核重编程的影响因素

近年来,人类核移植胚胎干细胞建系成为一项炙手可热的研究,用再生医学的理念治疗退行性疾病及器官移植为这一研究带来无穷的魅力和生命力;但是核重编程仍是核移植技术的瓶颈,制约了重构胚胎干细胞的研究。核重编程是指供体细胞核移入卵母细胞后必须停止本身的基因表达程序并恢复为胚胎发育所必需的特定的胚胎表达程序。只有供核发生完全重编程,重构胚胎才能正常发育。核重编程与供核者的年龄,供核细胞的组织来源、分化状态、细胞周期、传代次数,供核的表遗传标记以及供卵者的年龄、卵子的成熟度等因素有关。一般来说,颗粒细胞作为核供体最易被核重编程。供核者为胎体或新生体,供核细胞处于低分化状态或已传数代,供核细胞经过去表遗传标记处理,供卵者性成熟且年龄轻、卵子核与胞浆都成熟等均为有利于核重编程的因素。重构胚胎的培养方法对核重编程也至关重要,目前主张使用序贯培养及体细胞化培养。创造各种适于核重编程的条件有利于从更高的起点开展核移植胚胎干细胞研究,提高重构胚胎干细胞建系效率。     

体细胞重编程为多能干细胞的研究进展

胚胎干细胞不仅是研究哺乳动物早期胚胎发育、细胞分化、基因表达调控等发育生物学问题的有力工具,还可用于新药评价、细胞治疗等方面的研究.然而,为科学研究而捐献的人类卵子并不能够轻易获得,限制了人类胚胎干细胞相关研究的进展,解决这个问题的理想办法就是找到能够替代胚胎干细胞的其他成体多能细胞.综述了将哺乳动物体细胞诱导为多能干细胞的方法,重点介绍了利用特定的转录因子将体细胞诱导为诱导多能干细胞(induced pluripotent stem cells,iPS细胞)的最新进展,详细阐述了转录因子在诱导细胞重编程过程中发挥的作用,以及iPS细胞筛选与鉴定的方法,并展望了iPS细胞的应用前景.     

细胞融合致体细胞重编程机制研究进展

已分化的体细胞能够通过重编程转化回多能干细胞,在细胞移植、疾病细胞模型的制备以及药物筛选等领域具有重要意义。通过干细胞和体细胞的细胞融合,可使体细胞重编程。细胞融合致体细胞重编程速度快、效率高,是一种研究重编程机制的重要手段。对细胞融合致体细胞重编程的机制作一综述。     

诱导性多能干细胞研究技术的现状与前景

2006年Takahashi研究小组成功地将小鼠的胚胎成纤维细胞和鼠尾成纤维细胞重编成为诱导性多能干细胞(iPSC),开创了体细胞重编程的全新方法,所得iPSC具有和胚胎干细胞相似的生物学特性,不仅解决了人类胚胎干细胞研究所面临的伦理学困境和免疫排斥问题,而且进一步深化了对细胞多能性和基因组重编程的认识,再次掀起了干细胞研究的热潮。iPSC结合基因治疗和细胞治疗的成果已经应用到动物疾病模型上。iPSC能够自我更新并维持未分化状态,可分化为3个胚层来源的所有细胞,参与形成机体所有组织和器官,体外定向诱导能够分化出各种成体细胞,在理论研究和临床应用等方面都极具应用价值。但iPSC技术也存在一系列问题需要研究解决。     

肿瘤干细胞及肝癌肿瘤干细胞

肿瘤干细胞理论认为只有存在于肿瘤中的少量干细胞性质的细胞群体对肿瘤发生和发展起着决定作用,肿瘤是由干细胞突变积累而形成的无限增殖的异常组织,这一理论的提出使人们对肿瘤发生机制的认识上升到了一个新的高度,也引起了研究者的广泛关注;肝癌是我国常见的恶性肿瘤之一,我国肝癌死亡率居世界之首,目前对肝癌的研究是我国恶性肿瘤防治的重点工作,现对当前肿瘤干细胞与肝癌肿瘤干细胞相关方面的最新研究进展作一概述。     

Fusion of Tumour Cells with Host Cells

THE A9 cell is an 8-azaguanine-resistant derivative of the L cell line¹. It lacks the enzyme inosinic acid pyrophosphorylase and is thus unable to grow in media such as HAT² in which endogenous synthesis of nucleic acid is blocked by aminopterin. The A9 line has little ability to grow progressively in vivo. Inocula of 5 × 10⁴ to 2 × 10⁶ cells produced progressive tumours in only 12% of X-irradiated newborn syngeneic C3H mice³. One of these tumours was explanted as a cell suspension into Eagle's minimal essential medium containing 15% foetal calf serum and then subcultivated in this medium with 5% foetal calf serum. At each passage, cells were inoculated into X-irradiated newborn syngeneic C3H or semi-allogeneic C3H×X F₁ mice (X designates a number of different allogeneic parents). Between 80 and 90% of the inoculated animals developed progressive tumours. The cell line was therefore designated A9HT (high take incidence). The karyotype of the A9HT line was found to be similar to that of the A9 line, but with a slightly reduced total chromosome number. The modal chromosome number of A9HT was about 53, compared with about 57 for A9 (see ref. 4). A9 and A9HT both had between 20 and 30 bi-armed chromosomes and a number of marker chromosomes in common. A detailed comparison of the karyotypes of the two lines examined by the quinacrine fluorescence technique has been made⁵. The A9HT line, like its A9 parent, lacks inosinic acid pyrophos-phorylase and is unable to grow in HAT medium.     

Place Cells,Grid Cells,and Memory

The hippocampal system is critical for storage and retrieval of declarative memories, including memories for locations and events that take place at those locations. Spatial memories place high demands on capacity. Memories must be distinct to be recalled without interference and encoding must be fast. Recent studies have indicated that hippocampal networks allow for fast storage of large quantities of uncorrelated spatial information. The aim of the this article is to review and discuss some of this work, taking as a starting point the discovery of multiple functionally specialized cell types of the hippocampal–entorhinal circuit, such as place, grid, and border cells. We will show that grid cells provide the hippocampus with a metric, as well as a putative mechanism for decorrelation of representations, that the formation of environment-specific place maps depends on mechanisms for long-term plasticity in the hippocampus, and that long-term spatiotemporal memory storage may depend on offline consolidation processes related to sharp-wave ripple activity in the hippocampus. The multitude of representations generated through interactions between a variety of functionally specialized cell types in the entorhinal–hippocampal circuit may be at the heart of the mechanism for declarative memory formation.The scientific study of human memory started with Herman Ebbinghaus, who initiated the quantitative investigation of associative memory processes as they take place (Ebbinghaus 1885). Ebbinghaus described the conditions that influence memory formation and he determined several basic principles of encoding and recall, such as the law of frequency and the effect of time on forgetting. With Ebbinghaus, higher mental functions were brought to the laboratory. In parallel with the human learning tradition that Ebbinghaus started, a new generation of experimental psychologists described the laws of associative learning in animals. With behaviorists like Pavlov, Watson, Hull, Skinner, and Tolman, a rigorous program for identifying the laws of animal learning was initiated. By the middle of the 20th century, a language for associative learning processes had been developed, and many of the fundamental relationships between environment and behavior had been described. What was completely missing, though, was an understanding of the neural activity underlying the formation of the memory. The behaviorists had deliberately shied away from physiological explanations because of the intangible nature of neural activity at that time.Then the climate began to change. Karl Lashley had shown that lesions in the cerebral cortex had predictable effects on behavior in animals (Lashley 1929, 1950), and Donald Hebb introduced concepts and ideas to account for complex brain functions at the neural circuit level, many of which have retained a place in modern neuroscience (Hebb 1949). Both Lashley and Hebb searched for the engram, but they found no specific locus for it. A significant turning point was reached when Scoville and Milner (1957) reported severe loss of memory in an epileptic patient, patient H.M., after bilateral surgical removal of the hippocampal formation and the surrounding medial temporal lobe areas. “After operation this young man could no longer recognize the hospital staff nor find his way to the bathroom, and he seemed to recall nothing of the day-to-day events of his hospital life.” This tragic misfortune inspired decades of research on the function of the hippocampus in memory. H.M.’s memory impairment could be reproduced in memory tasks in animals and studies of H.M., as well as laboratory animals, pointed to a critical role for the hippocampus in declarative memory—memory, which, in humans, can be consciously recalled and declared, such as memories of experiences and facts (Milner et al. 1968; Mishkin 1978; Cohen and Squire 1980; Squire 1992; Corkin 2002). What was missing from these early studies, however, was a way to address the neuronal mechanisms that led information to be stored as memory.The aim of this article is to show how studies of hippocampal neuronal activity during the past few decades have brought us to a point at which a mechanistic basis of memory formation is beginning to surface. An early landmark in this series of investigations was the discovery of place cells, cells that fire selectively at one or few locations in the environment. At first, these cells seemed to be part of the animal’s instantaneous representation of location, independent of memory, but gradually, over the course of several decades, it has become clear that place cells express current as well as past and future locations. In many ways, place cells can be used as readouts of the memories that are stored in the hippocampus. More recent work has also shown that place cells are part of a wider network of spatially modulated neurons, including grid, border, and head direction cells, each with distinct roles in the representation of space and spatial memory. In this article, we shall discuss potential mechanisms by which these cell types, particularly place and grid cells, in conjunction with synaptic plasticity, may form the basis of a mammalian system for fast high-capacity declarative memory.     

Stem Cells

Russian Journal of Developmental Biology -     

Oocyte-like Cells Induced from Mouse Spermatogonial Stem Cells

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: During normal development primordial germ cells (PGCs) derived from the epiblast are the precursors of spermatogonia and oogonia. In culture, PGCs can be induced to dedifferentiate to pluripotent embryonic germ (EG) cells in the presence of various growth factors. Several recent studies have now demonstrated that spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) can also revert back to pluripotency as embryonic stem (ES)-like cells under certain culture conditions. However, the potential dedifferentiation of SSCs into PGCs or the potential generation of oocytes from SSCs has not been demonstrated before. RESULTS: We report that mouse male SSCs can be converted into oocyte-like cells in culture. These SSCs-derived oocytes (SSC-Oocs) were similar in size to normal mouse mature oocytes. They expressed oocyte-specific markers and give rise to embryos through parthenogenesis. Interestingly, the Y- and X-linked testis-specific genes in these SSC-Oocs were significantly down-regulated or turned off, while oocyte-specific X-linked genes were activated. The gene expression profile appeared to switch to that of the oocyte across the X chromosome. Furthermore, these oocyte-like cells lost paternal imprinting but acquired maternal imprinting. CONCLUSIONS: Our data demonstrate that SSCs might maintain the potential to be reprogrammed into oocytes with corresponding epigenetic reversals. This study provides not only further evidence for the remarkable plasticity of SSCs but also a potential system for dissecting molecular and epigenetic regulations in germ cell fate determination and imprinting establishment during gametogenesis.     

Dendritic Cells: Migratory Cells that are Attractive

Dendritic cells (DC) are professional antigen presenting cells, playing an important role in the initiation of T- and T cell dependent immune responses. DC are highly mobile cells and the sequential migration of DC in and out of tissues is accompanied by phenotypical as well as functional changes instrumental to their function as sentinels of the immune system. Herein, we will review recent progress in understanding the origin of DC, their migratory behaviour and their capacity to attract and interact with lymphocytes, with emphasis on the chemokine system.     

IDS Transfer from Overexpressing Cells to IDS-Deficient Cells

Iduronate sulfatase (IDS) is responsible for mucopolysaccharidosis type II, a rare recessive X-linked lysosomal storage disease. The aim of this work was to test the ability of overexpressing cells to transfer IDS to deficient cells. In the first part of our work, IDS processing steps were compared in fibroblasts, COS cells, and lymphoblastoid cell lines and shown to be identical: the two precursor forms (76 and 90 kDa) were processed by a series of intermediate forms to the 55- and 45-kDa mature polypeptides. Then IDS transfer to IDS-deficient cells was tested either by incubation with cell-free medium of overexpressing cells or by coculture. Endocytosis and coculture experiments between transfected Lβ and deleted fibroblasts showed that IDS transfer occurred preferentially by cell-to-cell contact as IDS precursors are poorly secreted by transfected Lβ. The 76- and 62-kDa IDS polypeptides transferred to deleted fibroblasts were correctly processed to the mature 55- and 45-kDa forms. Lβ were not able to internalize the 90-kDa phosphorylated precursor forms excreted in large amounts in the medium of overexpressing fibroblasts. Enzyme transfer occurred only by cell-to-cell contact, but the precursor forms transferred in Lβ after cell-to-cell contact were not processed. This absence of maturation was probably due to a mistargeting of IDS precursors in these cells.