7.342: Week 9 Questions

Post discussion, questions, or comments about the Week 8 course material here.

Amber

Odelberg et al:

It seems strange that they didn't include any in vivo experiments.

Takahashi et al

What is teratoma formation?

Elizabeth

Georgi

Takahashi & Yamanaka

Why exactly Klf4 is required for inducing dedifferentiation? They say it represses p53 but this doesn't sound like it's the whole story. Why did they pick Klf4 initially? They tried 24 they tried, maybe they could find more if they try other molecules?

Odelberg et al.

Msx1 is a homeodomain transcirption repressor; what are the known targets of Msx1 and has any work been done with this protein? What's its in vivo function?

Holly

Takahashi et al:

Fig 3c shows the methylation of the nanog promoter in iPs-MEFs to be much more similar to MEFs than ES cells. However fig 3a demonstrates that nanog is expressed in the iPS cells. Does this suggest that DNA methylation plays only a minor role in silencing the gene? The pattern of methylation in iPS cells is different to in MEFs - is this just a result of the way the data is presented, or could changes in the pattern (and not the amount) of methylation explain how gene repression can be overcome?

Odelberg et al:

Have the molecular mechanisms of msx-1 induced cellular dedifferentiation now been elucidated? What is the role of msx-1 in humans? (Presumably it doesn't cause dedifferentiation of our cells normally?)

Kathy

Manpreet

Zak

.