Leukemia Inhibitory Factor (LIF), rat

Leukemia Inhibitory Factor (LIF) is a lymphoid factor which promotes long-term maintenance of embryonic stem cells by suppressing spontaneous differentiation. LIF has a number of other activities including cholinergic neuron differentiation, control of stem cell pluripotency, bone and fat metabolism, mitogenesis of certain factor dependent cell lines and promotion of megakaryocyte production in vivo. Rat LIF (rtLIF) is a 19.9 kDa protein containing 183 amino acid residues that exhibits 91% amino acid sequence identity with murine LIF1. Analysis of the secondary structure of rat and murine LIF indicates a difference in the two dimensional structure of both proteins¹. Studies have shown that rtLIF is more effective in maintaining the undifferentiated phenotype of rat ES cells than similar concentrations of murine LIF¹.

Stem Cell Workflow Stage:

• Maintenance & Expansion
• Differentiation
• General Cell Culture

REFERENCES:

1. Takahama Y. et. al. (1998). “Molecular cloning and functional analysis of cDNA encoding a rat leukemia inhibitory factor: towards generation of pluripotent rat embryonic stem cells.” Oncogene 16: 3189-3196.