Pluto Bioinformatics

GSE75868: Naive Pluripotent Stem Cells Display Transcriptional and Epigenetic Signatures of the Human Pre-Implantation Embryo

Bulk RNA sequencing

Significant interest has been devoted to the isolation of human pluripotent stem cells displaying the naive state of mouse embryonic stem cells. However, to what extent naive human cells isolated in culture resemble pluripotent cells in vivo remains unclear. Here we present three lines of evidence indicating that naive pluripotent stem cells generated in the absence of transgenes share defining molecular signatures with the human pre-implantation embryo. First, a comprehensive analysis of the transposcriptome reveals that naive human cells have a retroelement expression profile of human cleavage stage embryos. Second, base-resolution mapping of the DNA methylome in naive human cells reveals a genome-wide reduction in CpG and non-CpG methylation levels. Third, female naive cells exhibit an X chromosome status that is similar to that of the human blastocyst. Our work demonstrates that pluripotent stem cells with epigenomic hallmarks of the early human embryo can be directly captured in vitro. SOURCE: Yupeng He (yuhe@salk.edu) - Ecker Salk Institute for Biological Studies