Description
Homozygous disruption of Bteb2/Klf5, a homolog of Drosophila gap gene Krppel, led to increased expression of various differentiation marker genes, such as Fgf5, Cdx2, and Brachyury in mouse ES cells without compromising their ability to differentiate into all three germ layers. Upon removal of LIF, Klf5-deficient ES cells showed faster differentiation kinetics than wild-type ES cells. In contrast, overexpression of Klf5 in ES cells suppressed the transcription of differentiation marker genes, and maintained pluripotency in the absence of LIF. In order to search downstream genes of Klf5, we surveyed genes implicated in ES cell proliferation by microarray analysis