Do your ears perk up when you hear about embryonic stem cells?  If not, they should!  Although embryonic stem cells are steeped in controversy, their importance and medical potential are indisputable.  A group of biologists recently showed a role for a protein called Banf1 in maintaining embryonic stem cells.

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are cells from a very early embryo that are pluripotent, meaning that they are able to develop into any of the over 200 types of cells in the body.  ESCs remain pluripotent through a process called self-renewal.  Understanding the self-renewal of ESCs is crucial for the development of therapies aimed to treat human diseases.  There are three main regulators of ESC self-renewal, called Sox2, Oct4, and Nanog.  A group of researchers recently found that a protein called Banf1 associates with Sox2.  Banf1 was already known to play important roles in the development of other organisms, but Cox and colleagues found that Banf1 is required for mouse and human ESCs to maintain their self-renewal ability.  When levels of Banf1 were reduced, ESCs began to develop into specific cell types rather than remain pluripotent.  As seen in the images above, ESCs grown in a lab have a very specific appearance (left).  When Banf1 levels were reduced in these ESCs (middle and right columns), cells no longer looked like pluripotent ESCs.  Instead, they were flattened and showed less staining for a pluripotent stem cell marker (red, bottom row) when compared with ESCs with normal levels of Banf1 (left).

For a more scientifically detailed description of this image, check out my post on The Node, the community forum for and by developmental biologists.