Kita K, Morkos C, Nolan K. Maintenance of stem cell self-renewal by sex chromosomal zinc-finger transcription factors. World J Methodol 2024; 14(4): 97664 [DOI: 10.5662/wjm.v14.i4.97664]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Katsuhiro Kita, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, St. Francis College, 179 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201, United States. kkita@sfc.edu
Research Domain of This Article
Cell Biology
Article-Type of This Article
Editorial
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Methodol. Dec 20, 2024; 14(4): 97664 Published online Dec 20, 2024. doi: 10.5662/wjm.v14.i4.97664
Maintenance of stem cell self-renewal by sex chromosomal zinc-finger transcription factors
Katsuhiro Kita, Celine Morkos, Kathleen Nolan
Katsuhiro Kita, Celine Morkos, Kathleen Nolan, Department of Biology, St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NY 11201, United States
Author contributions: Kita K conceptualized the idea and wrote the manuscript with Nonal K; Morkos C retrieved X/Y chromosome gene data and summarized the tables under the supervision of Kita K.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Katsuhiro Kita, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, St. Francis College, 179 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201, United States. kkita@sfc.edu
Received: June 4, 2024 Revised: July 10, 2024 Accepted: July 17, 2024 Published online: December 20, 2024 Processing time: 51 Days and 14.6 Hours
Abstract
In this Editorial review, we would like to focus on a very recent discovery showing the global autosomal gene regulation by Y- and inactivated X-chromosomal transcription factors, zinc finger gene on the Y chromosome (ZFY) and zinc finger protein X-linked (ZFX). ZFX and ZFY are both zinc-finger proteins that encode general transcription factors abundant in hematopoietic and embryonic stem cells. Although both proteins are homologs, interestingly, the regulation of self-renewal by these transcriptional factors is almost exclusive to ZFX. This fact implies that there are some differential roles between ZFX and ZFY in regulating the maintenance of self-renewal activity in stem cells. Besides the maintenance of stemness, ZFX overexpression or mutations may be linked to certain cancers. Although cancers and stem cells are double-edged swords, there is no study showing the link between ZFX activity and the telomere. Thus, stemness or cancers with ZFX may be linked to other molecules, such as Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and others. Based on very recent studies and a few lines of evidence in the past decade, it appears that the ZFX is linked to the canonical Wnt signaling, which is one possible mechanism to explain the role of ZFX in the self-renewal of stem cells.
Core Tip: This review article mainly focuses on stem cell self-renewal controlled by a sex chromosomal zinc-finger transcriptional factor, zinc finger protein X-linked (ZFX). We begin the review with the most recent paper reporting the autosomal gene regulation by ZFX, then we would like to shed light on missing links between ZFX and self-renewal signaling. Based on a line of evidence from very recent studies, it appears that the ZFX-canonical Wnt signaling (linked to c-Myc) emerged as one key pathway. Although ZFX plays an important role in stem cell self-renewal, it may be certain stem/progenitor cell-specific, and further studies will be necessary.
