A samurai without a master

Cesari, Francesca

doi:10.1038/nrm2459

Research Highlight
Published: 09 July 2008

Stem cells

A samurai without a master

Francesca Cesari

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology volume 9, page 587 (2008)Cite this article

780 Accesses
1 Citations
Metrics details

Access through your institution

Buy or subscribe

Previous work showed that caspase-3, a component of the cell-death system, cleaves and depletes ES cells of NANOG, thereby inducing differentiation. Using caspase-3 as bait in a two-hybrid screen, the authors discovered Ronin, a nuclear protein with a zinc-finger DNA-binding domain, which is common in factors that are involved in the epigenetic silencing of gene expression.

Using genetic deletion, the authors showed that Ronin is essential for embryogenesis and for the derivation and propagation of ES cells in vitro. They next demonstrated that the forced expression of Ronin allowed cells to proliferate without differentiation under conditions that do not support self-renewal. So, Ronin maintains ES-cell pluripotency, but does it act together with the canonical pluripotency factors?

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Access through your institution

Buy this article

Purchase on SpringerLink
Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

Dejosez, M. et al. Ronin is essential for embryogenesis and the pluripotency of mouse embryonic stem cells. Cell 133, 1162–1174 (2008)
Article CAS Google Scholar

Download references

Authors