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HEREDITAS(Beijing) ›› 2014, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (9): 879-887.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1005.2014.0879

• Reviews • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Reprogramming mechanism and genetic stability of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs)

Caifang Ren, Hongyan Sun, Lizhong Wang, Guomin Zhang, Yixuan Fan, Guangyao Yan, Dan Wang, Feng Wang   

  1. Jiangsu Livestock Embryo Engineering Laboratory, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China
  • Received:2014-04-17 Online:2014-09-20 Published:2014-09-20

Abstract: Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) were reprogrammed from somatic cells using specific transcription factors. Bypassing the ethical issue caused by embryonic stem cells (ESCs), iPSCs can be successfully induced from a variety of cells, which makes iPSCs a powerful research tool for developmental biology. iPSCs have also become indispensable to the research of life science due to their broad potential applications. However, it's a big challenge to obtain iPSCs with high quality and genetic stability. Here, we review the research progress of increasing the reprogramming mechanism and genetic stability of iPSCs in order to provide references of reprogramming efficiency of iPSCs, reducing the cost, and addressing key points of iPSCs quality control, further promotingclinical application of the iPSCs.

Key words: iPSCs, genetic stability, reprogramming, epigenetics