Nanog Recombinant Rabbit mAb (S-3917-57)

Nanog is a homeobox transcription factor that plays a critical role in embryonic stem (ES) cells, serving as a key node in the core regulatory network that maintains pluripotency and self-renewal. It typically works in concert with Oct4 and Sox2 to lock cells in an undifferentiated pluripotent state by binding to regulatory regions of downstream target genes, activating pluripotency-associated genes (such as Rex1 and Tcl1) while repressing the transcription of differentiation-related genes (such as Gata6 and Hand1). Nanog expression exhibits dynamic heterogeneity, with its protein levels fluctuating within a cell population. This "seesaw" mechanism allows some cells to transiently exit pluripotency in preparation for differentiation, whereas cells with high Nanog expression can maintain self-renewal independently even in the absence of exogenous differentiation inhibitors like LIF. Furthermore, during somatic cell reprogramming into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), Nanog is not required for initiating reprogramming but significantly improves the quality and efficiency of the resulting fully reprogrammed cells. It also serves as a marker for the establishment of pluripotency in the post-implantation epiblast, but is rapidly silenced during subsequent differentiation, and its aberrant expression has been linked to the development of various germ cell tumors.