Basic Fibroblast Growth Factor Activates MEK/ERK Cell Signaling Pathway and Stimulates the Proliferation of Chicken Primordial Germ Cells

Abstract

Our results demonstrate that chicken PGCs can be maintained in vitro without any differentiation or dedifferentiation in feeder free culture conditions, and subsequent analysis revealed that bFGF is one of the key factors that enable proliferation of chicken PGCs via MEK/ERK signaling regulating downstream genes that may be important for PGC proliferation and survival.