SOX2 Monoclonal Antibody (Btjce), eBioscience™, Invitrogen™

Description

• The Btjce MAb reacts with the transcription factor Sox2, a member of the SOX (sex determining region Y -related HMG (High Mobility Group) Box) family of proteins
• Sox family members play a role in early organ development, and in particular, Sox2 is essential for regulating genes that control normal mammalian embryogenesis
• Sox2 and family member Sox3 are expressed as early as the preimplantation and epiblast stages respectively
• Later expression is restricted to the neuroepithelium
• Sox2 has been shown to be necessary for maintaining self-renewal and pluripotency of mouse and human embryonic stem (ES) cells (ESC)
• Oct4 (POU5F1), Klf4, c-myc, and Sox2 were the original four factors used to reprogram differentiated mouse and human cells to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC)
• Expression of Sox2 is tightly regulated and recent studies have demonstrated that small changes in the levels of Sox2 in ES cells can trigger differentiation into multiple cell types
• Sox2 expression is not limited to ES cells, it is also essential for early neurogenesis where its expression becomes restricted to the neural plate, and later to neural stem cells where it functions to suppress neural differentiation
• Sox2 in combination with other stem cell markers can be used to characterize stem cell populations
• Ectopic expression of Sox2 has been associated with multiple cancer types including colorectal and breast
• SOX2 is an intronless gene encoding a member of the SRY-related HMG-box (SOX) family of transcription factors involved in the regulation of embryonic development and in the determination of cell fate
• The product of the SOX2 gene is required for stem-cell maintenance in the central nervous system, and also regulates gene expression in the stomach
• The SOX2 gene lies within an intron of another gene called SOX2 overlapping transcript (SOX2OT)
• Further, SOX2 protein may act as a transcriptional activator after forming a protein complex with other proteins
• Mutations in the SOX2 gene have been associated with bilateral anophthalmia, a severe form of structural eye malformation, optic nerve hypoplasia and syndromic microphthalmia.