Fig. 2

The difference between c-Myc-induced and L-Myc-induced iPS cells. The conventional type of iPS cells established by c-Myc transfection significantly decrease the expression level of differentiation-related genes. Instead, they can acquire stemness, which is defined by self-renewal and multi-lineage differentiation potentials, by the drastic up-regulation of pluripotency-related genetic expression. By striking contrast, the major role of the transcriptional factor L-Myc to generate iPS cells highly depends on the suppression of the genes which might be involved in tumorigenicity as well as the differentiation-related genes, thereby ruling out the possibility of malignant transformation [41].