April 6, 2017 A false color scanning electron micrograph of cultured human neuron from induced pluripotent stem cell. Credit: Mark Ellisman and Thomas Deerinck, National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, UC San Diego.

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), derived from human adult cells and capable of being differentiated to become a variety of cell types, are a powerful tool for studying everything from molecular processes underlying human diseases to elusive genetic variants associated with human phenotypes.

In a new paper published online April 6 in Stem Cell Reports, a large team of researchers led by senior author Kelly Frazer, PhD, professor of pediatrics and director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine at University of California San Diego School of Medicine describe a new collection of 222 systematically derived and characterized iPSC lines generated as part of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute's NextGen consortium.

Dubbed iPSCORE for "iPSC Collection for Omic Research," Frazer said the novel collection addresses several significant issues that currently hamper using iPSCs as a model system for human genetic studies investigating the segregation of traits, such as lack of large numbers of molecularly well-phenotyped lines and representation of ethnic diversity as well as participants from families and genetically unrelated individuals.

"The iPSCORE collection contains 75 lines from people of non-European ancestry, including East Asian, South Asian, African American, Mexican American, and Multiracial. It includes multigenerational families and monozygotic twins," said Frazer. "This collection will enable us to study how genetic variation influences traits, both at a molecular and physiological level, in appropriate human cell types, such as heart muscle cells. It will help researchers investigate not only common but also rare, and even family-specific variations."

The Stem Cell Reports paper is, in fact, one of four related studies just published by different teams of scientists, each with Frazer as senior author. The other three studies all utilize the iPSCORE resource to either address important genetic questions or develop new tools for analyzing iPSC lines:

Explore further: Induced pluripotent stem cells don't increase genetic mutations

More information: "iPSCORE: A Resource of 222 iPSC Lines Enabling Functional Characterization of Genetic Variation Across a Variety of Cell Types," Stem Cell Reports: DOI: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2017.03.012

"Aberrant iPSC Methylation is Associated with Motif Enrichment and Gene Expression Changes in a Clone-Specific Manner Independent of Genetics," Cell Stem Cell: DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2017.03.010

"Large-Scale Profiling Reveals the Influence of Genetic Variation on Gene Expression in Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells," Cell Stem Cell: DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2017.03.009

"High-Throughput and Cost-Effective Characterization of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells," Stem Cell Reports: DOI: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2017.03.011

It's been more than 10 years since Japanese researchers Shinya Yamanaka, M.D., Ph.D., and his graduate student Kazutoshi Takahashi, Ph.D., developed the breakthrough technique to return any adult cell to its earliest stage ...

University of Tsukuba-led researchers explored the function of the reprogramming factor KLF4 in production of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). KLF4 was shown to bind upstream of the Tcl1 target gene, which controls ...

Parkinson's disease (PD), a chronic, progressive and devastating neurodegenerative motor disease affecting as many as one million Americans, is complex. Its causes likely include a combination of genetic, environmental and ...

As the promise of using regenerative stem cell therapies draws closer, a consortium of biomedical scientists reports about 30 percent of induced pluripotent stem cells they analyzed from 10 research institutions were genetically ...

A multinational team of researchers led by stem cell scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Scripps Research Institute has documented specific genetic abnormalities that occur in human ...

How do you improve a Nobel Prize-winning discovery? Add a debilitating disease-causing gene mutation.

When scientists talk about laboratory stem cells being totipotent or pluripotent, they mean that the cells have the potential, like an embryo, to develop into any type of tissue in the body. What totipotent stem cells can ...

Viruses have a ubiquitous presence in the world. Their population is estimated to be 1031, 10 times greater than the nonillion (1030) of microbes on the planeta figure that surpasses the number of stars in the Milky Way. ...

Timesharing, researchers have found, isn't only for vacation properties.

Octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish often do not follow the genetic instructions in their DNA to the letter. Instead, they use enzymes to pluck out specific adenosine RNA bases (some of As, out of the As, Ts, Gs, and Us of RNA) ...

The DNA molecules in each one of the cells in a person's body, if laid end to end, would measure approximately two metres in length. Remarkably, however, cells are able to fold and compact their genetic material in the confined ...

In a major advance for fundamental biological research, UC San Francisco scientists have developed a tool capable of illuminating previously inscrutable cellular signaling networks that play a wide variety of roles in human ...

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

See more here:
In four related papers, researchers describe new and improved tools for stem cell research - Phys.Org