Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells

Mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) were first isolated and propagated in culture in 1981. mESCs are typically isolated from blastocysts from the inner cell mass of 3.5-day-old embryos and have the potential to generate every cell type found in the body. They can be maintained in an undifferentiated, pluripotent state by culture with leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) on a feeder layer of mitotically arrested mouse embryonic fibroblasts or in a feeder-free environment using gelatin-coated flasks.

mESCs are invaluable in understanding many aspects of cell and developmental biology, including cell cycle regulation, cellular interactions during development, and the control of gene expression. mESCs will continue to be an important system for understanding stem cell and tissue biology and for creating transgenic or knock-out mice, used as in vivo disease models, by homologous recombination. Recent applications of mESCs include identifying factors that maintain pluripotency, human genetic disease research, identifying novel differentiation factors, and for cancer biology.

ATCC provides a large collection of the most influential and widely cited mouse ES cells.

Learn more: Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells | ATCC