Totipotent stem cells articles within Nature Communications

Featured

• Article
  20 June 2023 | Open Access

  Selective binding of retrotransposons by ZFP352 facilitates the timely dissolution of totipotency network

  During zygotic genome activation the embryo must re-wire the regulatory network that sustains totipotency earlier during development. Here they identify ZFP352 as an essential factor that targets retrotransposon families to facilitate dissolution of the totipotency network and enable ZGA.

  • Zhengyi Li
  • , Haiyan Xu
  •  & Hongqing Liang

• Article
  21 September 2021 | Open Access

  Reconstructing aspects of human embryogenesis with pluripotent stem cells

  Human early development remains largely inaccessible, owing to technical and ethical limitations of working with natural embryos. Here the authors assess the extent to which human expanded pluripotent stem cells can specify distinct cell lineages and capture aspects of early human embryogenesis.

  • Berna Sozen
  • , Victoria Jorgensen
  •  & Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz

• Article
  11 August 2021 | Open Access

  CTCF is a barrier for 2C-like reprogramming

  Embryos at the 2-cell (2C) stage are totipotent, and overexpression of Dux transcription factor convert embryonic stem cells (ESCs) to a 2C-like state. Here the authors show that DUX-mediated 2C-like reprogramming is associated with DNA damage at CTCF sites and CTCF depletion promotes 2Clike conversion.

  • Teresa Olbrich
  • , Maria Vega-Sendino
  •  & Sergio Ruiz