TRAC 43: iPSC I: Principles and Methods

The importance of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in disease therapy and developmental biology is rapidly emerging and prompts this new 3-day lecture-lab course.

The emphasis of the course is on practical information that will help the researcher bring iPS technology to the laboratory. The staff conducting the course includes experts from academia and industry.

Lectures will discuss the expression of genes required for inducing pluripotency, methods of making (virus, RNA, plasmid) and maintaining iPS cells, growth conditions for differentiation (emphasis on hematopoietic and cardiac), and contrasts with embryonic stem cells.

Labs will cover techniques for staining for alkaline phosphatase and immunofluorescent markers of pluripotency on live cells. Furthermore, methods for picking iPS colonies and DNA transfections will also be included. Although the techniques will be conducted mostly on mouse cells, their applicability to human cells will be discussed.

Related Bio-Trac Course:
Bio-Trac 18: Stem Cells

Bio-Trac CRM 47: iPSC II: Induced Human Pluripotent Stem Cells (hiPSC); Differentiation to Neural Lineages

Bio-Trac CRM 48: Using TALENs for Gene Engineering

Bio-Trac CRM 49: iPSC: Making iPSC from Blood

9:00 - 5:00 p.m.