In this fantastic collaboration with the group of Ralf Jauch in Hong Kong University, we found out that Sox and POU genes, famous for their roles in stem cells, are older than previously thought. Not only that, but choanoflagellate Sox genes can substitute Sox2 when making mice induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). These, in turn, can contribute to make a chimeric mice, which we dubbed the "choano-mice". Then, we also reconstructed ancestral sequences in collaboration with the Hochberg group at the Max Plank, to find reveal that many of the ancestral Sox proteins have Sox2-like potential. Choanoflagellate POU is also remarkable, as very few species encode them, yet its DNA binding specificity is still very much like most homeodomains, not yet binding to the octamer, the preferred motif for animal POU orthologues. See the paper here:
This research has sparked quite an unexpected love from the media outlets, and we got covered in several venues, including the Washington Post:
All the way to a funnily titled version in a British tabloid:
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