Expression profiling in transgenic FVB/N embryonic stem cells overexpressing STAT3.

To investigate the importance of STAT3 in the establishment of ES cells we have in a first step derived stable pluripotent embryonic stem cells from transgenic FVB mice expressing a conditional tamoxifen dependent STAT3-MER fusion protein. In a second step, STAT3-MER overexpressing cells were used to identify STAT3 pathway-related genes by expression profiling in order to identify new key-players involved in maintenance of pluripotency in ES cells. Keywords: Comparative expression analysis, STAT3 pathway related genes FVB/N derived embryonic stem cells cultivated in the presence of LIF were compared with FVB/N ES cells overexpressing STAT3-MER and cultivated in the presence of 4-hydroxytamoxifen and absence of LIF