Transcriptome variations among human embryonic stem cell lines are associated with their differentiation propensity

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) have the potential to form any cell type in the body, making them attractive cell sources in drug screening, regenerative medicine, disease and developmental processes modeling. However, not all hESC lines have the equal potency to generate desired cell types in vi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2018-02, Vol.13 (2), p.e0192625-e0192625
Main Authors: Sun, Changbin, Zhang, Jiawen, Zheng, Dongmin, Wang, Jian, Yang, Huanming, Zhang, Xi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bias
Biology and Life Sciences
Cell cycle
Cell Differentiation
Cell lines
Cells, Cultured
Cellular signal transduction
Comparative analysis
Differentiation
DNA methylation
Drug screening
Embryo cells
Embryonic stem cells
Embryonic Stem Cells - cytology
Embryonic Stem Cells - metabolism
Embryos
Gene expression
Genes
Genetic aspects
Genomes
Genomics
Humans
Molecular modelling
Physiological aspects
Pluripotency
Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction
Regenerative medicine
Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction
Signal transduction
Signaling
Specifications
Stem cells
Transcription factors
Transcription Factors - metabolism
Transcriptome
Variation
Watson, James D
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Summary:Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) have the potential to form any cell type in the body, making them attractive cell sources in drug screening, regenerative medicine, disease and developmental processes modeling. However, not all hESC lines have the equal potency to generate desired cell types in vitro. Significant variations have been observed for the differentiation efficiency of various human ESC lines. The precise underpinning molecular mechanisms are still unclear. In this work, we compared transcriptome variations of four hESC lines H7, HUES1, HUES8 and HUES9. We found that hESC lines have different gene expression profiles, and these differentially expressed genes (DEGs) are significantly enriched in developmental processes, such as ectodermal, mesodermal and endodermal development. The enrichment difference between hESC lines was consistent with its lineage bias. Among these DEGs, some pluripotency factors and genes involved in signaling transduction showed great variations as well. The pleiotropic functions of these genes in controlling hESC identity and early lineage specification, implicated that different hESC lines may utilize distinct balance mechanisms to maintain pluripotent state. When the balance is broken in a certain environment, gene expression variation between them could impact on their different lineage specification behavior.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0192625