Effect of ablation of Max gene expression on ES cells cultured under conventional or 2i/Nam condition.. Mus musculus

c-Myc is one of key players that are crucially involved in maintaining the undifferentiated state and the self-renewal of ESCs. To understand the mechanism by which c-Myc helps preserve these prominent characteristics of ESCs, we generated null-ES cells for the Max gene, which encodes the best characterized partner protein for all Myc family proteins. Although Myc/Max complexes have been widely regarded as crucial regulators of the ESC status, our data reveal that ESCs do not absolutely require these complexes in so-called ground state or related conditons and that this requirement is restricted to conventional ES culture conditions without using a MAPK inhibitor. Overall design: Simply Dox-treated or Nanog (WT or D67G mutant)-rescued Max-null ESCs which were cultured under conventional culture condition and 2i/Nam-treated completely Max-null ES cells from which Dox-regulatable cDNA was removed were used for RNA source. Samples from Dox-untreated Max-null ESCs cultured under conventional culture condition were used as reference samples for Dox-treated cells and Nanog-rescued cells, while a sample from wild-type ESCs cultured under 2i/Nam condition was used as a reference sample for completely Max-null ES cells cultured with 2i/Nam.