Retinoic acid can induce mouse embryonic stem cell R1/E to differentiate toward female germ cells while oleanolic acid can induce R1/E to differentiate toward both types of germ cells.

Retinoic acid (RA) and oleanolic acid (OA) were studied about their potential to induce mouse embryonic stem cell R1/E (MESC-R1/E) to differentiate toward germ cells. Embryoid bodies (EBs) first formed from MESC-R1/E and EBs were allowed to attach to the bottoms of normal cell-culturing plate and grow. Then, different compounds including RA, OA and so on were respectively added to induce MESC-R1/E to differentiate. After 72 h, microscopy images were taken for all interventions, then total RNAs were extracted, cDNAs were synthesized and real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR (qPCR) was performed to detect the transcriptional expression patterns of 11 reproductive-differentiation-related genes for different compounds respectively. During the data analysis, it was found RA significantly up-regulated the expression levels of GDF-9, Stra8, SCP3, Mvh, ZP1, ZP2, and ZP3, while significantly down-regulated the levels of Itag6 and Itgb1, and the level of Oct-4 was down-regulated insignificantly, while the level of TP2 was up-regulated insignificantly; OA significantly up-regulated the expression levels of Stra8, SCP3, Mvh, ZP1, ZP2, Itgb1, and TP2, and the levels of Oct-4, GDF-9, ZP3, and Itga6 were up-regulated insignificantly. The data showed that RA can induce MESC-R1/E to differentiate toward female germ cells while OA can induce MESC-R1/E to differentiate toward male and female germ cells.