Institute of Genetics, School of Biology, University of Nottingham, Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham NG2 2UH, UK.
Development. 2010 Sep;137(18):2973-80. doi: 10.1242/dev.049262.
Cells in the pluripotent ground state can give rise to somatic cells and germ cells, and the acquisition of pluripotency is dependent on the expression of Nanog. Pluripotency is conserved in the primitive ectoderm of embryos from mammals and urodele amphibians, and here we report the isolation of a Nanog ortholog from axolotls (axNanog). axNanog does not contain a tryptophan repeat domain and is expressed as a monomer in the axolotl animal cap. The monomeric form is sufficient to regulate pluripotency in mouse embryonic stem cells, but axNanog dimers are required to rescue LIF-independent self-renewal. Our results show that protein interactions mediated by Nanog dimerization promote proliferation. More importantly, they demonstrate that the mechanisms governing pluripotency are conserved from urodele amphibians to mammals.
多能性起始状态的细胞可以产生体细胞和生殖细胞，而多能性的获得依赖于 Nanog 的表达。多能性在哺乳动物和有尾两栖动物的原始外胚层中是保守的，在这里，我们从蝾螈中分离到 Nanog 的同源物（axNanog）。axNanog 不含有色氨酸重复结构域，并且在蝾螈动物帽中以单体形式表达。单体形式足以调节小鼠胚胎干细胞的多能性，但 axNanog 二聚体是维持 LIF 非依赖性自我更新所必需的。我们的结果表明，Nanog 二聚体介导的蛋白相互作用促进了增殖。更重要的是，它们证明了从有尾两栖动物到哺乳动物，调控多能性的机制是保守的。
