Project description:The equivalency of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) with human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) remains controversial. Here, we devised a strategy to assess the contribution of clonal growth, reprogramming method and genetic background to transcriptional patterns in hESCs and hiPSCs. Surprisingly, transcriptional variation originating from two different genetic backgrounds was dominant over variation due to the reprogramming method or cell type of origin of pluripotent cell lines. Moreover, the few differences we detected between isogenic hESCs and hiPSCs neither predicted functional outcome, nor distinguished an independently derived, larger set of unmatched hESC/hiPSC lines. We conclude that hESCs and hiPSCs are transcriptionally and functionally highly similar and cannot be distinguished by a consistent gene expression signature. Our data further imply that genetic background variation is a major confounding factor for transcriptional comparisons of pluripotent cell lines, explaining some of the previously observed expression differences between unmatched hESCs and hiPSCs. Expression profiling of human embryonic stem cells (ESCs), induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and fibroblasts, mostly in triplicates.
Project description:We developed a strategy to generate cardiac progenitor cells from human induced pluripotent stem cells using a novel small molecule. mRNA-sequencing results showed different gene expression profile among undifferentiated human induced pluripotent stem cells(hiPSCs), DMSO and ISX-9 treated hiPSCs.In comparsion with DMSO treated cells or undifferentiated hiPSCs, ISX-9 upregulated the genes related to WNT and cytoskeleton remodeling and TGF-β signaling, which are involved in heart development and cardiac differentiation. In addition, the genes related to cardiac differentiation signaling pathways were upregulated by ISX-9 including development of PIP3 signaling in cardiomyocyte myocytes, muscle contraction and NF-AT hypertrophy signaling.
Project description:Differentiation of mammalian pluripotent cells involves large-scale changes in transcription and, among the molecules that orchestrate these changes, chromatin remodellers are essential to initiate, establish and maintain a new gene regulatory network. The NuRD complex is a highly conserved chromatin remodeller which fine-tunes gene expression in embryonic stem cells. While the function of NuRD in mouse pluripotent cells has been well defined, no study yet has defined NuRD function in human pluripotent cells. We investigated the structure and function of NuRD in human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). Using immunoprecipitation followed by mass-spectrometry in hiPSCs and in naive or primed mouse pluripotent stem cells, we find that NuRD structure and biochemical interactors are generally conserved. Using RNA sequencing, we find that, whereas in mouse primed stem cells and in mouse naive ES cells, NuRD is required for an appropriate level of transcriptional response to differentiation signals, hiPSCs require NuRD to initiate these responses. This difference indicates that mouse and human cells interpret and respond to induction of differentiation differently.
Project description:Assessing relevant molecular differences between human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) and human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) is important, given that such differences may impact their potential therapeutic use. Controversy surrounds recent gene expression studies comparing hiPSCs and hESCs. Here, we present an in-depth quantitative mass spectrometry-based analysis of hESCs, two different hiPSCs and their precursor fibroblast cell lines. Our comparisons confirmed the high similarity of hESCs and hiPSCS at the proteome level as 97.8% of the proteins were found unchanged. Nevertheless, a small group of 58 proteins, mainly related to metabolism, antigen processing and cell adhesion, was found significantly differentially expressed between hiPSCs and hESCs. A comparison of the regulated proteins with previously published transcriptomic studies showed a low overlap, highlighting the emerging notion that differences between both pluripotent cell lines rather reflect experimental conditions than a recurrent molecular signature. See the Data Processing section of the published paper concerning the bioinformatics pipeline used. PMCID: PMC3261715 PMID: 22108792 Mol Syst Biol. 2011 Nov 22;7:550. doi: 10.1038/msb.2011.84. The quantitative proteomes of human-induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Munoz J, Low TY, Kok YJ, Chin A, Frese CK, Ding V, Choo A, Heck AJ. Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Group, Bijvoet Center for Biomolecular Research and Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Project description:Cornelia de Lange syndrome (CdLS) is an autosomal dominant disease mainly caused by mutations in the Nipped-B-like protein (NIPBL) gene resulting in the alteration of the cohesin pathway. Here, we generated human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from a CdLS patient carrying a mutation in the NIPBL gene, c.5483G>A, and tested CRISPR-Cas based approaches to repair the genetic defect. We applied an efficient and precise method of gene correction through CRISPR-Cas induced homology directed repair (HDR), which allowed the generation of hiPSC clones with regular karyotype and preserved stemness. The efficient and precise gene replacement strategy developed in this study can be extended to the modification of other genomic loci in hiPSCs. Isogenic wild-type and mutated hiPSCs produced with the CRISPR-Cas technology are fundamental CdLS cellular models to study the disease molecular determinants and identifying therapeutic targets.
Project description:We developed simple, robust, efficient, and serum-free/feeder-free induction protocol for neural crest cells from human pluripotent stem cells. To characterize the hNCCs and hNCC-derived MSCs, we performed gene expression profiling experiments. Comparison of gene expressions among hiPSCs, hESCs, hNCCs and hNC-MSCs
Project description:We developed a novel strategy for the rapid and efficient differentiation of MCs from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC). These hiPSC-derived MCs (hiPSC-MCs) exhibit phenotypic and functional characteristics of human skin MCs (hsMCs) and peripheral hematopoietic stem cell-derived MCs (PSCMCs). hiPSC-MCs display stable expression of MC-associated receptors such as CD117, FcεRIα and MRGPRX2, and degranulate by stimulation with IgE/anti-IgE and Substance. P.