Project description:The underlying mechanisms which are responsible and govern early haematopoietic differentiation during development are poorly understood. Gene expression comparison between pluripotent human embryonic stem cells and earliest haematopoietic progenitors may reveal novel transcripts and pathways and provide crucial insight into early haematopoietic lineage specification and development. Understanding of transcriptional cues that direct differentiation of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) to defined and functional cell types is essential for their future clinical applications. In this study we have undertaken a comparative transcriptional approach of haematopoietic progenitors derived from hESC at various stages of a feeder and serum free differentiation method and have shown that the largest transcriptional changes occur during the first four days of differentiation. Data mining based on molecular function pointed to RhoGTPase signalling as key regulator of this differentiation. Inhibition of this pathway using a chemical inhibitor (Y26732) resulted in a significant downregulation of haematopoietic progenitors throughout the differentiation window, thus uncovering a previously unappreciated role for RhoGTPase signalling in differentiation of hESC to haematopoietic lineages. There are a total of 4 samples within this microarray experiment with 2 biological replicates for each sample. Pluripotent human embryonic stem cells (day 0) underwent haematopoietic differentiation and at various stages of development (day 4, day 6, day8) differentiated cells were FACS sorted for two key haemangioblast markers, CD31 and KDR.
Project description:The aim of this project is to differentiate human embryonic stem cells to an extra-embryonic fate, specifically the hypoblast. This is of uttermost importance given the current lack of human hypoblast stem cells.
We hypothesized that the pluripotent characteristics of the starting human embryonic stem cell population may dictate the competency for extra-embryonic cell fate specification. Based on this hypothesis and using human embryonic stem cells maintained in different naïve-like culture regimes, we have now developed conditions that allow the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells to a stable GATA6+ SOX2- population. This suggests that these cells may be putative human hypoblast stem cells. To validate this finding here we propose to perform RNA sequencing experiments of the differentiated human embryonic stem cells. By comparing their RNA expression profile to the single cell sequencing data of the human embryo that we are currently generating, we will be able to determine the identity of our GATA6+ SOX2- cells, and establish whether they represent the in vivo human hypoblast.
Project description:The aim of this project is to differentiate human embryonic stem cells to an extra-embryonic fate, specifically the hypoblast. This is of uttermost importance given the current lack of human hypoblast stem cells.
We hypothesized that the pluripotent characteristics of the starting human embryonic stem cell population may dictate the competency for extra-embryonic cell fate specification. Based on this hypothesis and using human embryonic stem cells maintained in different naïve-like culture regimes, we have now developed conditions that allow the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells to a stable GATA6+ SOX2- population. This suggests that these cells may be putative human hypoblast stem cells. To validate this finding here we propose to perform RNA sequencing experiments of the differentiated human embryonic stem cells. By comparing their RNA expression profile to the single cell sequencing data of the human embryo that we are currently generating, we will be able to determine the identity of our GATA6+ SOX2- cells, and establish whether they represent the in vivo human hypoblast.
This dataset contains all the data available for this study on 2020-04-20.