Martin G R
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1981 Dec;78(12):7634-8. doi: 10.1073/pnas.78.12.7634.
This report describes the establishment directly from normal preimplantation mouse embryos of a cell line that forms teratocarcinomas when injected into mice. The pluripotency of these embryonic stem cells was demonstrated conclusively by the observation that subclonal cultures, derived from isolated single cells, can differentiate into a wide variety of cell types. Such embryonic stem cells were isolated from inner cell masses of late blastocysts cultured in medium conditioned by an established teratocarcinoma stem cell line. This suggests that such conditioned medium might contain a growth factor that stimulates the proliferation or inhibits the differentiation of normal pluripotent embryonic cells, or both. This method of obtaining embryonic stem cells makes feasible the isolation of pluripotent cells lines from various types of noninbred embryo, including those carrying mutant genes. The availability of such cell lines should made possible new approaches to the study of early mammalian development.
本报告描述了直接从正常的植入前小鼠胚胎建立细胞系的过程，该细胞系注入小鼠后会形成畸胎癌。通过观察从分离的单个细胞衍生而来的亚克隆培养物可分化为多种细胞类型，最终证实了这些胚胎干细胞的多能性。此类胚胎干细胞是从在已建立的畸胎癌干细胞系条件培养基中培养的晚期囊胚的内细胞团中分离出来的。这表明这种条件培养基可能含有一种生长因子，它能刺激正常多能胚胎细胞的增殖或抑制其分化，或二者兼具。这种获取胚胎干细胞的方法使得从各种非近交系胚胎（包括携带突变基因的胚胎）中分离多能细胞系成为可能。此类细胞系的可得性应为早期哺乳动物发育的研究带来新的方法。
