Project description:Metabolism is vital to cellular function and tissue homeostasis during human lung development. In utero, embryonic pluripotent stem cells undergo endodermal differentiation towards a lung progenitor cell fate that can be mimicked in vitro using induced human pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) to study genetic mutations. To identify differences between wild type and surfactant protein B (SFTPB)-deficient cell lines during endoderm specification towards lung, we used an untargeted metabolomics approach to evaluate the developmental changes in metabolites. We found that the metabolites most enriched during the differentiation from pluripotent stem cell to lung progenitor cell, regardless of cell line, were sphingomyelins and phosphatidylcholines, two important lipid classes in fetal lung development. The SFTPB mutation had no metabolic impact on early endodermal lung development. The identified metabolite signatures during lung progenitor cell differentiation may be utilized as biomarkers for normal embryonic lung development.
Project description:Transcription profiling of mouse embryonic stem cell line CGR8 during differentiation to mesenchymal stem cells and then adipocyte precursors
Project description:NE-4C is a mouse neural stem cell line used for study of neuronal differentiation. Setdb1 is an epigenetic modification factor responsible for catalyzing the histone modification H3K9me3. Transcription of Setdb1 gene is enriched in embryonic neural cells during vertebrate embryogenesis. Setdb1 is upregulated in cancer cells and promotes cancers. We found that knockdown of Setdb1 in NE-4C cells led to neuronal differentiation.
Project description:The evolution of brain complexity correlates with an increased expression of long, non-coding (lnc) RNAs in neuronal tissues. Although prominent examples illustrate the potential of lncRNAs to scaffold and target epigenetic regulators to chromatin loci, only few cases have been described to function during neurogenesis. We present a first functional characterization of the lncRNA LINC01322, which we term RUS for ‘RNA upstream of Slitrk3’. The RUS gene is well conserved in mammals by sequence and synteny next to the neurodevelopmental gene Slitrk3. RUS is exclusively expressed in neural cells and its expression increases along with neuronal markers during neuronal differentiation of mouse embryonic cortical neural stem cells. Depletion of RUS locks neuronal precursors in an intermediate state towards neuronal differentiation, with arrested cell cycle and increased apoptosis. RUS associates with chromatin in the vicinity of genes involved in neurogenesis, most of which change their expression upon RUS depletion. The identification of a range of epigenetic regulators as specific RUS interactors suggests that the lncRNA may mediate gene activation and repression in a highly context-dependent manner.
Project description:Protein kinase signalling is a major mechanism by which embryonic stem cell pluripotency and differentiation is controlled. However, the pathways and components that regulate embryonic stem cell identity have not been systematically defined. Here, we employ FGF4 signalling as a model system to investigate phosphoproteome dynamics in differentiating mouse embryonic stem cells. We report identification and quantitation of more than 10,000 phosphopeptides, of which hundreds of phosphophoylation sites are regulated more than 2-fold by acute FGF4 stimulation. We hypothesise that phosphorylation sites in this dataset are relevant for regulating the transition of mouse embryonic stem cells from pluripotency towards lineage specific differentiation.