Ageing is an inevitable condition that afflicts all humans. Recent achievements, such as the
generation of induced pluripotent stem cells, have delivered preliminary evidence that …

Cells of a multicellular organism are genetically homogeneous but structurally and
functionally heterogeneous owing to the differential expression of genes. Many of these …

The telomere is a special functional complex at the end of linear eukaryotic chromosomes,
consisting of tandem repeat DNA sequences and associated proteins. It is essential for …

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) self-renew indefinitely and give rise to derivatives of
all three primary germ layers, yet little is known about the signaling cascades that govern …

Stem cells represent natural units of embryonic development and tissue regeneration.
Embryonic stem (ES) cells, in particular, possess a nearly unlimited self-renewal capacity …

Cloning of mammals by nuclear transfer (NT) results in gestational or neonatal failure with at
most a few percent of manipulated embryos resulting in live births. Many of those that …

To assess whether heterozygosity of the donor cell genome was a general parameter crucial
for long-term survival of cloned animals, we tested the ability of embryonic stem (ES) cells …

Most cells contain the same set of genes and yet they are extremely diverse in appearance
and functions. It is the selective expression and repression of genes that determines the …

Telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein complex that catalyses the addition of TTAGGG repeats
onto telomeres, repetitive DNA structures found at the ends of linear chromosomes. The …

Full-term development has now been achieved in several mammalian species by transfer of
somatic nuclei into enucleated oocytes [1, 2]. Although a high proportion of such …