Friday Gumbo Journal Club: hESC line differences and a killer MSC review
Posted by attilachordash on March 29, 2008
It’s Friday, that is a lunch heaven for a Gumbo loving biogeek at Tulane:
Stem Cell Express: Copy Number Variant Analysis of Human Embryonic Stem Cells from the Teitell Lab (It’s good to see that CIRM funded results and papers are coming out):
Differences between individual DNA sequences provide the basis for human genetic variability. Forms of genetic variation include single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), insertions/duplications, deletions, and inversions/translocations. The genome of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) has been mainly characterized by karyotyping and comparative genomic hybridization (CGH), techniques whose relatively low resolution at 2 – 10-Mb cannot accurately determine most copy number variability, which is estimated to involve 10 – 20% of the genome. In this brief technical report we examined HSF1 and HSF6 hESCs using array-CGH (aCGH) to determine copy number variants (CNVs) as a higher resolution method for characterizing hESCs. Our approach utilized 5 samples for each hESC line and showed 4 consistent CNVs for HSF1 and 5 consistent CNVs for HSF6. These consistent CNVs included amplifications and deletions that ranged in size from 20-Kb to 1.48-Mb involving 7 different chromosomes, were both shared and unique between hESCs, and were maintained during neuronal stem/progenitor cell differentiation or drug selection. Thirty HSF1 and 40 HSF6 less consistently scored but still highly significant candidate CNVs were also identified. Overall, aCGH provides a promising approach for uniquely identifying hESCs and their derivatives and highlights a potential genomic source for distinct differentiation and functional potentials that lower resolution karyotype and CGH techniques could miss.
Also check ScienceDaily coverage: Human Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Differ In Genes That Could Control Disease Susceptibility
Arnold Caplan: Adult mesenchymal stem cells for tissue engineering versus regenerative medicine. J Cell Physiol. 2007 Nov;213(2):341-7. This review summarizes the biological basis for the in vivo functioning of MSCs through development and aging
