Leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) is used to:
Embryonic stem cells derived from pre-implantation blastocyst inner cell mass ICM three point five days mouse development maintain naive pluripotency defined by capacity to contribute to all three germ layers ectoderm mesoderm endoderm forming teratoma containing differentiated tissues and chimeric mice after blastocyst injection including germ line transmission indicating functional pluripotency plus transcriptome expressing OCT4 SOX2 NANOG core triad forming feedforward loop activating pluripotency enhancers while repressing differentiation genes via recruiting Polycomb repressive complex 2
Ref: Smith & Hooper Dev Biol 1987 LIF JAK-STAT3 KLF4 pluripotency; Ying Nature 2008 ground state 2i mouse ES naive.
