Reprogramming of somatic cells into induced pluripotent stem cells is achieved by the expression of defined transcription factors. In the last few years, reprogramming strategies on the basis of doxycycline-inducible lentiviruses in mouse cells became highly powerful for screening purposes when the expression of a GFP gene, driven by the reactivation of endogenous stem cell specific promoters, was used as a reprogramming reporter signal. However, similar reporter systems in human cells have not been generated. Here, we describe the derivation of drug-inducible human fibroblast-like cell lines that express different subsets of reprogramming factors containing a GFP gene under the expression of the endogenous OCT4 promoter. These cell lines can be used to screen functional substitutes for reprogramming factors or modifiers of reprogramming efficiency. As a proof of principle of this system, we performed a screening of a library of pluripotent-enriched microRNAs and identified hsa-miR-519a as a novel inducer of reprogramming efficiency.
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