Authors
Kotaro Sasaki, Shihori Yokobayashi, Tomonori Nakamura, Ikuhiro Okamoto, Yukihiro Yabuta, Kazuki Kurimoto, Hiroshi Ohta, Yoshinobu Moritoki, Chizuru Iwatani, Hideaki Tsuchiya, Shinichiro Nakamura, Kiyotoshi Sekiguchi, Tetsushi Sakuma, Takashi Yamamoto, Takahide Mori, Knut Woltjen, Masato Nakagawa, Takuya Yamamoto, Kazutoshi Takahashi, Shinya Yamanaka, Mitinori Saitou
Publication date
2015/8/6
Journal
Cell stem cell
Volume
17
Issue
2
Pages
178-194
Publisher
Elsevier
Description
Mechanisms underlying human germ cell development are unclear, partly due to difficulties in studying human embryos and lack of suitable experimental systems. Here, we show that human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) differentiate into incipient mesoderm-like cells (iMeLCs), which robustly generate human primordial germ cell-like cells (hPGCLCs) that can be purified using the surface markers EpCAM and INTEGRINα6. The transcriptomes of hPGCLCs and primordial germ cells (PGCs) isolated from non-human primates are similar, and although specification of hPGCLCs and mouse PGCs rely on similar signaling pathways, hPGCLC specification transcriptionally activates germline fate without transiently inducing eminent somatic programs. This includes genes important for naive pluripotency and repression of key epigenetic modifiers, concomitant with epigenetic reprogramming. Accordingly …
Scholar articles
K Sasaki, S Yokobayashi, T Nakamura, I Okamoto… - Cell stem cell, 2015