SYNOPSIS
Tissue regeneration is an important issue in the field of operative dentistry. In a series of previous studies, we demonstrated that tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α activates the potential for totipotency in human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) and leads to the regeneration of target cells or tissues in the presence of appropriate environmental factors. We proposed that TNF-α is an essential activator of totipotency for hMSCs to differentiate into various types of cells. In this study, we focused on epigenetic control that is closely associated with initialization of cells and examined the expression levels of Oct4, which is a marker of initialization of epigenetic control using the transcription factor set of TNF-α and Activin A. Our results indicate that this transcription factor set induces initialization of hMSCs to ES cells.

Key words: human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs), TNF-%alpha;, Activin A, Initialization of epigenetic modification, ES cell