{"doi":"10.17615/mdef-cm08","title":"Role of Tet proteins in 5mC to 5hmC conversion, ES-cell self-renewal and inner cell mass specification","abstract":"DNA methylation is one of the best-characterized epigenetic modifications 1–4. While the enzymes that catalyze DNA methylation have been characterized, enzymes responsible for the reversal process have been elusive 5. A recent study indicates that the human Tet1 protein could catalyze the conversion of 5-methyl-C (5mC) of DNA to 5-hydroxyl-methyl-C (5hmC), raising the possibility that DNA demethylation may be a Tet1-mediated process 6. Here we extended this study by demonstrating that all three mouse Tet proteins can also catalyze a similar reaction. Interestingly, Tet1 plays an important role in mouse ES cell maintenance through maintaining the expression of Nanog in ES cells. Importantly, Tet1 knockdown-mediated down-regulation of Nanog correlated with its promoter methylation, supporting a role for Tet1 in regulating DNA methylation status. Furthermore, knockdown of Tet1 in preimplantation embryos resulted in a bias towards trophectoderm differentiation. Thus, our studies not only uncover the enzymatic activity of the Tet proteins, but also demonstrate a role for Tet1 in ES cell maintenance and ICM cell specification.","journal":"UNC Libraries","year":2020,"id":54706,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":101,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9483,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":283495,"name":"Shinsuke Ito","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":283496,"name":"Olena Taranova","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":281613,"name":"Kwonho Hong","orcid":"0000-0001-7479-4091","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":283497,"name":"Ana C. D’Alessio","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1647,"name":"Yi Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-2789-0811","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":281612,"name":"Lawrence C. Sowers","orcid":"0000-0002-8402-4792","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:04:14.743014Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}