Guangzhou Health Institute published an article in Nature: A new mechanism for regulating pluripotent cell-somatic cell transition

The exit of the pluripotent state or the pluripotent cell-somatic transition is an important event in the development of mammalian embryos, and it is also a hot area in the study of cell fate determination

Recently, Liu Jing's group from Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Pei Duanqing's group from West Lake University collaborated on the discovery of chromatin remodeling complex BAFs based on the model of cJUN-induced pluripotent cell-somatic cell transition of mouse embryonic stem cells The subunit SS18 of (Brg/Brahma-associated factors) significantly regulates this process through its own phase separation properties.

The team discovered early that the proto-oncogene cJUN can quickly induce the exit of the pluripotency state (Jing Liu et al, Nature Cell Biology, 2015).

Researchers have conducted in-depth studies and found that SS18 protein can undergo Liquid-liquid Phase Separation (LLPS) in the body, which is shown in 1.

In view of how the phase separation behavior of SS18 regulates the specific mechanism of pluripotency withdrawal, researchers have further carried out in-depth research on the mechanism

This study reveals the important role of phase separation in the assembly process of chromatin remodeling complexes, enriching people's understanding of the regulation of cell fate transitions at different levels, and is useful for in-depth study of BAFs complexes in development, cell fate transitions, and tumors.

The paper was completed under the joint guidance of Pei Duanqing from West Lake University and Liu Jing from the Guangzhou Institute of Health.

Paper link

Pluripotent stem cells-a new mechanism of somatic cell fate transition