Composed the paper: H.W., Y.T.. intracellular EpICD just was struggling to improve activity of EpCAM targeted genes, but by preventing GSK-3 signaling and stabilizing beta-catenin signaling, EpICD could then stimulate the promoter activity significantly. These total results showed that EpCAM intracellular domain required beta-catenin signaling to improve porcine cell reprogramming. The era Clinofibrate of porcine pluripotent stem cells may not just confirm the idea of pluripotency in local pets, but wthhold the enormous prospect of animal reproduction and translational medicine also. In last many years, porcine induced pluripotent stem cells (piPSCs) were generated in many research groups including our laboratory1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. Because pig embryonic stem cells were not available yet, most of manipulation conditions for maintenance of piPSCs were consulted Clinofibrate with the conditions for mouse iPS9 and human iPS cells10. Therefore, the reported piPSCs showed the divers morphology and biological features. Some piPSC lines were bFGF-dependent and showed mouse epiblast-derived stem cell like morphology2,11; other lines were LIF-dependence and showed mouse ESC-like morphology3. Thus, the optimal culture condition and regulatory circuitry for generation and maintenance of piPSCs are not standardized, and the generation and maintenance of na?ve state piPSCs Clinofibrate is still an important issue that has to be addressed. Previous reports were sure that signaling pathways used for maintaining human and mouse iPSCs did not sustain the self-renewal and pluripotency of porcine iPSCs12,13. The species-related regulatory signaling pathway as reported in mouse and human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs)14 is likely to be applied in pig and other animals, in which PI3K/AKT signaling and TGF-beta signaling pathways, instead of LIF and bFGF signaling pathways, may play key roles to maintain porcine stem cell pluripotency15. The epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) is a transmembrane glycoprotein encoded by the gene, and is highly expressed in SFTPA2 epithelia and epithelial-derived neoplasms16. In human and mouse iPSCs, EpCAM was also highly expressed and play a critical role in cell reprogramming17,18,19,20. Consistently, our previous study showed that is highly expressed in porcine iPSCs13. Therefore, as a cell-to-cell adhesion molecule, EpCAM is involved in cell signaling, migration, proliferation, and differentiation19,20,21. Recent studies showed that EpCAM was a key surface receptor that was able to translocate to the nucleus and to regulate downstream target gene expression22. Through two-step proteolytic processing, EpCAM is sequentially cleaved by tumor necrosis factor-alpha converting enzyme (TACE/ADAM17) and presenilin 2 (PS-2), a protease component of gamma-secretase complex, and releases an N-terminal extracellular domain (EpEX) and a 5?kDa C-terminal intracellular domain (EpICD). The EpICD fragment, which is unstable in the cytoplasm, is able to translocate into nucleus and comes along with co-transcriptional activators to stimulate gene expression and cell proliferation23. The study showed that EpICD with FHL2, beta-catenin, and Lef-1 formed a nuclear complex, which contacted DNA at Lef-1 consensus sites, and stimulated expression24. Consequently, the role of EpCAM in porcine cell proliferation and its association with reprogramming is worth to be investigated. Studies have shown the fundamental function of EpCAM in regulation of human and mouse pluripotent stem cells17,18. In order to gain insight into the epigenetic regulation of porcine pluripotency, we comprehensively analyzed porcine EpCAM gene and investigated the regulation function of EpCAM for porcine cell reprogramming and maintenance of pluripotency. Our discoveries would be conducive to establish na?ve state of porcine pluripotent stem cells. Results EpCAM Is Highly Expressed Clinofibrate in Porcine Pluripotent Stem Cells The expression profile of in porcine tissues from newborn piglet was conducted by RT-PCR analysis. As described previously25,26, EpCAM is highly expressed in epithelial cells. In our study, message was detectable in all tested samples, which may be due to the widespread epithelial cells in most of organs. In those epithelia enriched organs, for instance lung, kidney, and small intestine, EpCAM was relatively abundant than in other tissues (Fig. 1A). The heatmap of microarray data (note: and genes were not included in the Affymetrix Pig GeneChipe13) of eight piPSC lines and two primary porcine skin fibroblasts showed that and core pluripotent genes, such as.