Expression data from rat pluripotent stem (PS) cells

Various pluripotent stem (PS) cells can be isolated from early developing embryos in mouse. Among these, two kinds of PS cells were isolated from mouse blastocysts: conventional embryonic stem (ES) cells with domed morphology that are maintained with LIF and BMP for self-renewal, and FAB-ES cells with flat morphology that need bFGF, activinA and BIO for self-renewal. Here, we report a novel PS cell line from rat blastocysts, which is distinguishable from conventional ES cells but is morphologically similar to mouse epiblast stem cell (EpiSC) lines. We used microarrays to detail the global program of gene expression of rES and rPS.多种多能干细胞（pluripotent stem cells, PS cells）可从小鼠早期发育胚胎中分离得到。其中，两类多能干细胞可从小鼠囊胚中分离获取：一类为具有穹顶状形态的传统胚胎干细胞（embryonic stem cells, ES cells），其自我更新需通过LIF与BMP维持；另一类为具有扁平形态的FAB-ES细胞，其自我更新依赖bFGF、激活素A（activinA）与BIO。本研究报道了一种全新的大鼠囊胚来源PS细胞系，该细胞系与传统ES细胞存在显著差异，但形态学特征与小鼠上胚层干细胞（epiblast stem cell, EpiSC）系相似。我们通过基因芯片技术，详细解析了rES与rPS细胞的全局基因表达调控程序。