ABSTRACT: The developmental potential of human pluripotent stem cells suggests that they can produce disease-relevant cell types for biomedical research. However, substantial variation has been reported among pluripotent cell lines, which could affect their utility and clinical safety. Such cell-line specific differences must be better understood before one can confidently use embryonic stem (ES) or induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in translational research. Towards this goal we have established genome-wide reference maps of DNA methylation and gene expression for 20 previously derived human ES lines and 12 human iPS cell lines, and we have measured the in vitro differentiation propensity of these cell lines. This resource enabled us to assess the epigenetic and transcriptional similarity of ES and iPS cells and to predict the differentiation efficiency of individual cell lines. The combination of assays yields a scorecard for quick and comprehensive characterization of pluripotent cell lines. We used microarrays to compare the gene expression profiles between human ES cell lines, iPS cell lines, fibroblasts and embryoid bodies, and to identify cell-line specific outlier genes. 20 human ES cell lines (HUES1, HUES3, HUES6, HUES8, HUES9, HUES13, HUES28, HUES44, HUES45, HUES48, HUES49, HUES53, HUES62, HUES63, HUES64, HUES65, HUES66, H1, H7, H9), 12 human iPS cell lines (hiPS 11a, hiPS 11b, hiPS 11c, hiPS 15b, hiPS 17a, hiPS 17b, hiPS 18a, hiPS 18b, hiPS 18c, hiPS 20b, hiPS 27b, hiPS 27e), 6 fibroblast cell lines (hFib 11, hFib 15, hFib 17, hFib 18, hFib 20, hFib 27), 5 embryoid bodies (hEB16d HUES1, hEB16d HUES3, hEB16d HUES6, hEB16d HUES45, hEB16d H1)
