Deterministic nuclear reprogramming of mammalian nuclei to a totipotency-like state by Amphibian meiotic oocytes for stem cell therapy in humans.

The ultimate aim of nuclear reprogramming is to provide stem cells or differentiated cells from unrelated cell types as a cell source for regenerative medicine. A popular route towards this is transcription factor induction, and an alternative way is an original procedure of transplanting a single somatic cell nucleus to an unfertilized egg. A third route is to transplant hundreds of cell nuclei into the germinal vesicle (GV) of a non-dividing Amphibian meiotic oocyte, which leads to the activation of silent genes in 24 h and robustly induces a totipotency-like state in almost all transplanted cells.