Single cell biology-a Keystone Symposia report.

Single cell biology has the potential to elucidate many critical biological processes and diseases, from development and regeneration to cancer. Single cell analyses are uncovering the molecular diversity of cells, revealing a clearer picture of the variation among and between different cell types. New techniques are beginning to unravel how differences in cell state-transcriptional, epigenetic, and other characteristics-can lead to different cell fates among genetically identical cells, which underlies complex processes such as embryonic development, drug resistance, response to injury, and cellular reprogramming.

Synthetic and genomic regulatory elements reveal aspects of -regulatory grammar in mouse embryonic stem cells.

In embryonic stem cells (ESCs), a core transcription factor (TF) network establishes the gene expression program necessary for pluripotency. To address how interactions between four key TFs contribute to regulation in mouse ESCs, we assayed two massively parallel reporter assay (MPRA) libraries composed of binding sites for SOX2, POU5F1 (OCT4), KLF4, and ESRRB. Comparisons between synthetic -regulatory elements and genomic sequences with comparable binding site configurations revealed some aspects of a regulatory grammar.

Targeting SALL4 by entinostat in lung cancer.

The overall survival of lung cancer patients remains dismal despite the availability of targeted therapies. Oncofetal protein SALL4 is a novel cancer target. We herein report that SALL4 was aberrantly expressed in a subset of lung cancer patients with poor survival.