Role of iPSC-Producing Factors in Pre-Implantation Embryos

Although the induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) procedure has clearly become the method of choice because of its convenience and for ethical considerations, when generating pluripotent stem cells from somatic cells, it is still important to consider the number of advantageous features of the somatic cell nuclear transfer procedure. For example, it will be interesting to discover whether iPSC factors, which were originally identified as genes expressed specifically in embryonic stem cells, can account for all of the unknown reprogramming factors present in pre-implantation embryos. With this point in mind, in this chapter we will review each reprogramming factor that has been reported in mouse and human iPSC studies from the perspective of its expression pattern in pre-implantation embryos. We will also examine some of the candidate genes that are expressed in pre-implantation embryos but do not form part of the common iPSC factors due to their lack of or low expression in embryonic stem cells, because such factors may help to efficiently produce high-quality iPSCs.