Some genes such as OCT3/4, SOX2, NANOG, LIN28 and KLF4 are highly expressed in undifferentiated embryonic stem cells and progenitor cells. They are important for stem cells to have their special properties or “stemness”, and hence are sometimes called “Stemness Genes”. Tremendous advances have been achieved recently in induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from mouse and human somatic cells. These cells have enormous potentials in curing many human diseases. To facilitate stem cell research and exploration, Biomyx now offer all the “Stemness Genes” that have been used to induce iPS: OCT3/4, SOX2, NANOG, LIN28, c-Myc and KLF4.

OCT3/4, SOX2, c-Myc and KLF4 were initially used to generate induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from mouse adult cells (Takahashi & Yamanaka, 2007). The same set of genes were later used to induce iPS cells with human somatic cells (Park et al., 2008) although a different set of genes consisting OCT3/4, SOX2, NANOG and LIN28 were used by Yu et al (2007) to induce iPS cells from human cells.

Important Features of Expression-Ready Stemness Genes

1. Every nucleotide of the inserts in ProteGene clones is confirmed by DNA sequencing. The inserts are flanked by common restriction sites so they can can be easily cut out and cloned into another expression vector (e.g. a viral expression vector) if so desired.

2. Optimized CMV promotor for high-level constitutive mammalian protein expression so the vectors can be used directly to express the proteins in mammalian cells.

3. N-terminal 2xHA tag allows for easy immunoprecipitation, enzyme activity assay and Western analysis

4. The plasmids are Kanamycin resistance in bacteria and G418 resistance in mammalian cells.

5. The plasmid DNA are highly purified and ready for transfection of mammalian cells.