Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Stem Cells. Mar 26, 2015; 7(2): 315-328
Published online Mar 26, 2015. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v7.i2.315
Induced pluripotent stem cells: Mechanisms, achievements and perspectives in farm animals
Dharmendra Kumar, Thirumala R Talluri, Taruna Anand, Wilfried A Kues
Dharmendra Kumar, Thirumala R Talluri, Taruna Anand, Wilfried A Kues, Institute of Farm Animal Genetics, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute, 31535 Mariensee, Germany
Dharmendra Kumar, Animal Physiology and Reproduction Division, Central Institute for Research on Buffaloes, Hisar 125001, Haryana, India
Thirumala R Talluri, Taruna Anand, National Research Centre on Equines, Hisar 125001, Haryana, India
Author contributions: Kumar D and Kues WA drafted and wrote the rewiew; Kumar D designed the figures; Talluri TR and Anand T contributed specific chapters; all authors proof-read the final version.
Supported by CREST fellowship from Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India (DK); International fellowship for PhD from ICAR (TRT), Government of India; International training in generation of iPS cells from NAIP, ICAR, Government of India (TA).
Conflict-of-interest: The authors declare there are no competing interests.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Wilfried A Kues, PhD, Institute of Farm Animal Genetics, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute, Höltystr. 10, 31535 Mariensee, Germany. wilfried.kues@fli.bund.de
Telephone: +49-5034-871120 Fax: +49-5034-871101
Received: July 15, 2014
Peer-review started: July 17, 2014
First decision: August 14, 2014
Revised: December 3, 2014
Accepted: December 16, 2014
Article in press: December 18, 2014
Published online: March 26, 2015
Core Tip

Core tip: The generation of an induced status of pluripotency in somatic cells by ectopic expression of core transcription factors allows to extending advanced genetic modifications and reproductive techniques to species, for which the derivation of genuine embryonic stem cells was not successful till now. The commonly employed viral gene transfer may be genotoxic and therefore non-viral methods for iPS cell derivation are intensively studied. In this review, we focus on the mechanisms of cellular reprogramming and current methods used to induce pluripotency.