Analysis of Human Stem Cell Transcription Factors

Transcription factors , , , and are expressed in both human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and cancer stem cells and they play a crucial role in maintaining characteristics of stemness such as self-renewal and pluripotency. This article evaluates the expression of variants of the main stem cell-specific transcription factors and critically and accurately with specific primers designed for identifying the most important variants that maintain stemness. We have examined four variants of along with a processed pseudogene and seven variants of in human teratocarcinoma cell lines (NTERA2D1, SuSa, GCT-27, and 833KE), hESCs, and ovarian cancer cells by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction. In addition, we have examined their expression in NTERA2D1 cells on differentiation with all-trans-retinoic-acid. We show that is expressed in all teratocarcinoma cells and can be distinguished from , which is an expressed pseudogene. was not expressed in any of the cell lines, including ESCs. was expressed in all cells, whereas the variant -variant 3 was expressed only in NTERA2D1 cells. On differentiation of NTERA2D1 with retinoic acid, only and were expressed. In ovarian cancer cells, only 3/6 expressed and . All malignant cells from patients with ovarian cancer ( = 6) expressed and . These results demonstrate the necessity to precisely evaluate the expression of stem cell transcription factors when defining stemness.