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In this seminar, Dr. Ralf Jauch discusses his team’s work on re-engineering the SOX, OCT, and KLF transcription factors to reprogram somatic cells into multipotent, pluripotent, and expanded potential stem cells. This research has led to the development of enhanced factors such as eSOX17, which accelerates the induction of pluripotency. This advancement allows for the direct conversion of human somatic cells into totipotent-like cells or brain stem cells, offering new tools for modeling age-related neurological diseases.
He will also discuss recent findings on the evolutionary origins of stem cell transcription factors, revealing that SOX and OCT emerged over 700 million years ago, long before the appearance of animal multicellularity and modern stem cells.
