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  • Review Article
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The cell cycle in stem cell proliferation, pluripotency and differentiation

Nature Cell Biology volume 21, pages 1060–1067 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Cyclins, cyclin-dependent kinases and other components of the core cell cycle machinery drive cell division. Growing evidence indicates that this machinery operates in a distinct fashion in some mammalian stem cell types, such as pluripotent embryonic stem cells. In this Review, we discuss our current knowledge of how cell cycle proteins mechanistically link cell proliferation, pluripotency and cell fate specification. We focus on embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic neural stem/progenitor cells.

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Fig. 1: Organization of the cell cycle in somatic cells (MEFs) and in different types of ESCs.
Fig. 2: The cell cycle in somatic reprogramming and pluripotency maintenance.
Fig. 3: The cell cycle during dissolution of pluripotency and cell differentiation.
Fig. 4: The cell cycle in neurogenesis.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grant R01CA202634 (to P.S.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Life and Health Sciences, Key Laboratory of Data Analytics and Optimization for Smart Industry (Ministry of Education), Northeastern University, Shenyang, Liaoning, China

    Lijun Liu

  2. Department of Cancer Biology, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and Department of Genetics, Blavatnik Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Lijun Liu, Wojciech Michowski, Aleksandra Kolodziejczyk & Piotr Sicinski

  3. Department of Oncologic Pathology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA

    Wojciech Michowski

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Correspondence to Piotr Sicinski.

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Competing interests

P.S. has been a consultant at Novartis, Genovis, Guidepoint, The Planning Shop, ORIC Pharmaceuticals and Exo Therapeutics; his laboratory receives research funding from Novartis. W.M. is currently an employee of Cedilla Therapeutics.

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Liu, L., Michowski, W., Kolodziejczyk, A. et al. The cell cycle in stem cell proliferation, pluripotency and differentiation. Nat Cell Biol 21, 1060–1067 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41556-019-0384-4

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