A Rare Clinical Case of Oral White Sponge Nevus and the Associated Challenges in Its Differential Diagnosis.

White sponge nevus is a rare genetic autosomal dominant disorder characterized by irregular patches of thick, white diffuse plaques, which mainly affects the oral mucosa and, very rarely, the skin or mucosa of the nose, esophagus, and anogenital region. We present a case of oral white sponge nevus in a 62-year-old woman, the differential diagnosis of which was of particular interest due to other similar white oral lesions, some of which are potentially malignant. The lesions were verified histologically. However, no treatment was performed due to the benign and asymptomatic nature of the lesions.

Defining an essential transcription factor program for naïve pluripotency.

The gene regulatory circuitry through which pluripotent embryonic stem (ES) cells choose between self-renewal and differentiation appears vast and has yet to be distilled into an executive molecular program. We developed a data-constrained, computational approach to reduce complexity and to derive a set of functionally validated components and interaction combinations sufficient to explain observed ES cell behavior. This minimal set, the simplest version of which comprises only 16 interactions, 12 components, and three inputs, satisfies all prior specifications for self-renewal and furthermore predicts unknown and nonintuitive responses to compound genetic perturbations with an overall accuracy of 70%. We propose that propagation of ES cell identity is not determined by a vast interactome but rather can be explained by a relatively simple process of molecular computation.