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Abstract
Sox2 protein is necessary in maintaining the pluripotency state and self-renewal capacity of human embryonic stem cells; it also plays a role in human pluripotent stem cells differentiation towards neuroectodermal lineages. The Smad proteins are involved in signaling pathways that impact pluripotent cell fates, with phosphorylated Smad2,3 involved in Activin/Nodal-mediated self-renewal maintenance and definitive endoderm differentiation and phosphorylated Smad1,5,8 involved in BMP-induced mesoderm differentiation, both forming complexes with Smad4 to exert their functions. In this study, I show that Sox2 and Smad complexes act in an antagonistic way in determining the stem cell fate by competitively binding to the transcriptionally active open chromatin regions and triggering the activation of signaling networks governing neuroectodermal or mesendodermal cell fates.