Abstract In 2007, the International Knockout Mouse Consortium (IKMC) made the ambitious
promise to generate mutations in virtually every protein-coding gene of the mouse genome�…

The mouse is the foremost vertebrate experimental model because its genome can be
precisely and variously engineered. Now that the mouse genome has been sequenced and�…

Oct4 is a mammalian POU transcription factor expressed by early embryo cells and germ
cells. We report that the activity of Oct4 is essential for the identity of the pluripotential�…

Histone 3 lysine 4 (H3K4) methylation is a universal epigenetic mark. In mammals, there are
six H3K4 methyltransferases related to yeast Set1 and fly Trithorax, including two orthologs�…

POU transcription factors are involved in transcriptional regulation during early embryonic
development and cell differentiation. Oct-4, a member of this family, has been shown to be�…

Tyrosine site-specific recombinases (SSRs) including Cre and FLP are essential tools for
DNA and genome engineering. Cre has long been recognized as the best SSR for genome�…

Epigenesis is the process whereby the daughters of a dividing cell retain a chromatin state
determined before cell division. The best-studied cases involve the inheritance of�…

Alteration of thyroid gland morphogenesis (thyroid dysgenesis) is a frequent human
malformation. Among the one in three to four thousand newborns in which congenital�…

Developmental signals such as Wnts are often presented to cells in an oriented manner. To
examine the consequences of local Wnt signaling, we immobilized Wnt proteins on beads�…

Pluripotent embryonic stem cells (ESCs) maintain self-renewal while ensuring a rapid
response to differentiation cues. The identification of genes maintaining ESC identity is�…