Reprogramming Mouse Fibroblasts with piggyBac Transposons

In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka and his student Kazutoshi Takahashi showed that the expression of only four specific genes is sufficient to reprogram fully differentiated somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells. These cells, termed induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, share many of their characteristics with embryonic stem (ES) cells. In this protocol, we describe one of the simplest ways of generating iPS cells from mouse fibroblasts. It combines an efficient transposon-mediated transfection and the tetracycline-inducible system to control the expression of the Yamanaka reprogramming factors.