Comparison and Analysis of Gene Expression in the Induction of Pluripotency

Pluripotent embryonic stem cells are remarkable for their potential to differentiate into diverse cell types that make up the organism. With relatively low efficiency, induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can be obtained from fibroblasts upon ectopic expression of Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc. iPS cells are similar to embryo stem (ES) cells in many aspects. Since different cell types express distinct genes and perform different functions, we analyze the relationship between gene expression and the cell state through comparisons. In this paper, we chose ES cells, iPS cells, and fibroblasts from human and mouse to compare. Our results show that iPS cells have an ES cell-like expression pattern. Gnome-wide occupancy maps have revealed the correlation between the factor binding and the gene expression intensities.