Differences in protein domains between c-MYC and L-MYC during cellular reprogramming

MYC proteins (c-MYC, n-MYC, and L-MYC) are essential for improving reprogramming efficiency. L-MYC can generate iPSC colonies more efficiently than c-MYC. Still, it remains unknown what is the functional differences between c-MYC and L-MYC during cellular reprogramming. In this study, we performed proteome analysis to tackle this question and found MYC Box 0 (MB0) and 2 (MB2), one of the functional domains conserved in MYC family protein, might cause the phenotypic differences between the MYC proteins.

MYC蛋白（MYC proteins）涵盖c-MYC、n-MYC与L-MYC，是提升细胞重编程效率的必需因子。相较于c-MYC，L-MYC可更高效地生成诱导多能干细胞（induced pluripotent stem cell, iPSC）集落，但目前学界仍未明确二者在细胞重编程过程中的功能差异。本研究通过蛋白质组分析对该问题展开探究，结果发现MYC盒结构域0（MB0）与MYC盒结构域2（MB2）——作为MYC家族蛋白中保守的功能结构域——或是导致不同MYC蛋白产生表型差异的关键因素。