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. Rat embryonic stem cell (ES) and rat flat pluripotent stem (fPS) cells were selected for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays. We analysed each sample for three replications.