Recent studies have aimed to convert cultured human pluripotent cells to a naive state, but it remains unclear to what extent the resulting cells recapitulate in vivo naive pluripotency. Here we ...propose a set of molecular criteria for evaluating the naive human pluripotent state by comparing it to the human embryo. We show that transcription of transposable elements provides a sensitive measure of the concordance between pluripotent stem cells and early human development. We also show that induction of the naive state is accompanied by genome-wide DNA hypomethylation, which is reversible except at imprinted genes, and that the X chromosome status resembles that of the human preimplantation embryo. However, we did not see efficient incorporation of naive human cells into mouse embryos. Overall, the different naive conditions we tested showed varied relationships to human embryonic states based on molecular criteria, providing a backdrop for future analysis of naive human pluripotency.
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•Naive human ESCs share a unique transposon signature with cleavage-stage embryos•Global DNA demethylation in naive human ESCs is reversible except at imprinted loci•The X chromosome status of naive human ESCs resembles the preimplantation embryo•Naive human ESCs incorporate into the mouse morula or blastocyst very inefficiently
Theunissen et al. use molecular criteria based on transposon expression, DNA methylation, and X chromosome status to compare naive human pluripotent cells to human preimplantation embryos. Current approaches yield cells that most closely resemble the morula/early blastocyst stage.
Transposable element-embedded regulatory sequences (TEeRS) and their KRAB-containing zinc finger protein (KZFP) controllers are increasingly recognized as modulators of gene expression. We aim to ...characterize the contribution of this system to gene regulation in early human development and germ cells.
Here, after studying genes driven by the long terminal repeat (LTR) of endogenous retroviruses, we identify the ape-restricted ZNF676 as the sequence-specific repressor of a subset of contemporary LTR12 integrants responsible for a large fraction of transpochimeric gene transcripts (TcGTs) generated during human early embryogenesis. We go on to reveal that the binding of this KZFP correlates with the epigenetic marking of these TEeRS in the germline, and is crucial to the control of genes involved in ciliogenesis/flagellogenesis, a biological process that dates back to the last common ancestor of eukaryotes.
These results illustrate how KZFPs and their TE targets contribute to the evolutionary turnover of transcription networks and participate in the transgenerational inheritance of epigenetic traits.
The molecular diagnosis of retinal dystrophies is difficult because of the very important number of genes implicated and is rarely helped by genotype-phenotype correlations. This prompted us to ...develop IROme, a custom designed in solution-based targeted exon capture assay (SeqCap EZ Choice library, Roche NimbleGen) for 60 retinitis pigmentosa-linked genes and three candidate genes (942 exons). Pyrosequencing was performed on a Roche 454 GS Junior benchtop high-throughput sequencing platform. In total, 23 patients affected by retinitis pigmentosa were analyzed. Per patient, 39.6 Mb were generated, and 1111 sequence variants were detected on average, at a median coverage of 17-fold. After data filtering and sequence variant prioritization, disease-causing mutations were identified in ABCA4, CNGB1, GUCY2D, PROM1, PRPF8, PRPF31, PRPH2, RHO, RP2, and TULP1 for twelve patients (55%), ten mutations having never been reported previously. Potential mutations were identified in 5 additional patients, and in only 6 patients no molecular diagnosis could be established (26%). In conclusion, targeted exon capture and next-generation sequencing are a valuable and efficient approach to identify disease-causing sequence variants in retinal dystrophies.
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