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Volume 23, No 1, Jan 2013

ISSN: 1001-0602 
EISSN: 1748-7838 2018 
impact factor 17.848* 
(Clarivate Analytics, 2019)

Volume 23 Issue 1, January 2013: 92-106

ORIGINAL ARTICLES

Zscan4 promotes genomic stability during reprogramming and dramatically improves the quality of iPS cells as demonstrated by tetraploid complementation

>Jing Jiang1,*, Wenjian Lv1,*, Xiaoying Ye2, Lingbo Wang1, Man Zhang1, Hui Yang1, Maja Okuka3, Chikai Zhou1, Xuan Zhang1, Lin Liu2 and Jinso

1Group of Epigenetic Reprogramming, State Key Laboratory of Cell Biology, Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China
2State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology; Department of Cell Biology and Genetics, College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China
3Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of South Florida College of Medicine, Tampa, FL 33612, USA
Correspondence: Jinsong Li,Lin Liu,( jsli@sibcb.ac.cn;liutelom@yahoo.com)

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells generated using Yamanaka factors have great potential for use in autologous cell therapy. However, genomic abnormalities exist in human iPS cells, and most mouse iPS cells are not fully pluripotent, as evaluated by the tetraploid complementation assay (TCA); this is most likely associated with the DNA damage response (DDR) occurred in early reprogramming induced by Yamanaka factors. In contrast, nuclear transfer can faithfully reprogram somatic cells into embryonic stem (ES) cells that satisfy the TCA. We thus hypothesized that factors involved in oocyte-induced reprogramming may stabilize the somatic genome during reprogramming, and improve the quality of the resultant iPS cells. To test this hypothesis, we screened for factors that could decrease DDR signals during iPS cell induction. We determined that Zscan4, in combination with the Yamanaka factors, not only remarkably reduced the DDR but also markedly promoted the efficiency of iPS cell generation. The inclusion of Zscan4 stabilized the genomic DNA, resulting in p53 downregulation. Furthermore, Zscan4 also enhanced telomere lengthening as early as 3 days post-infection through a telomere recombination-based mechanism. As a result, iPS cells generated with addition of Zscan4 exhibited longer telomeres than classical iPS cells. Strikingly, more than 50% of iPS cell lines (11/19) produced via this “Zscan4 protocol” gave rise to live-borne all-iPS cell mice as determined by TCA, compared to 1/12 for lines produced using the classical Yamanaka factors. Our findings provide the first demonstration that maintaining genomic stability during reprogramming promotes the generation of high quality iPS cells.


Cell Research (2013) 23:92-106. doi:10.1038/cr.2012.157; published online 13 November 2012

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