7.342: Week 6 Questions

Post discussion, questions, or comments about the Week 6 course material here.

Amber

Wichterle et al.

What is figure 6a showing?

Chambers et al.

In figure 6a they choose four days as the amount of time to test if Nanog prevents differentiation. Is this too a short a time to see if Nanog really maintains undifferentiated cells?

How did 'sonic hedgehog' get its name?

Elizabeth

Georgi

Wichterle et al.

Why do they graft mouse ESC-derived cells into chick embryos? Is it so they can distunguish between graft6ed and embryonal cells and how does this influences the differentiation of the cells?

Chambers et al.

Is it known how the expression of Nanog is regulated? What are the targets regulated by Nanog and what's their role in stem cell self-renewal?

Holly

Wichterle et al:

How does fluoresecence- activated cell sorting work?

Chambers et al:

How might knowledge of Nanog be utilized? Could it be used to maintain a supply of embryonic stem cells (thereby avoiding the need to have lots of embryos to fulfill a therapeutic requirement)? Would it not be adequate just to use LIF for this purpose?

Kathy

Chambers: It's interesting that Nanog requires presence of Oct4 for function, and yet Oct4 induces differentiation. How is nanog itself regulated?

Wichterle:

Manpreet

Zak

.