RT Journal
A1 Bibikova, Marina
A1 Chudin, Eugene
A1 Wu, Bonnie
A1 Zhou, Lixin
A1 Garcia, Eliza Wickham
A1 Liu, Ying
A1 Shin, Soojung
A1 Plaia, Todd W.
A1 Auerbach, Jonathan M.
A1 Arking, Dan E.
A1 Gonzalez, Rodolfo
A1 Crook, Jeremy
A1 Davidson, Bruce
A1 Schulz, Thomas C.
A1 Robins, Allan
A1 Khanna, Aparna
A1 Sartipy, Peter
A1 Hyllner, Johan
A1 Vanguri, Padmavathy
A1 Savant-Bhonsale, Smita
A1 Smith, Alan K.
A1 Chakravarti, Aravinda
A1 Maitra, Anirban
A1 Rao, Mahendra
A1 Barker, David L.
A1 Loring, Jeanne F.
A1 Fan, Jian-Bing
T1 Human embryonic stem cells have a unique epigenetic signature
JF Genome Research 
JO Genome Research 
YR 2006 
FD September 01 
VO 16 
IS 9 
SP 1075 
OP 1083 
DO 10.1101/gr.5319906 
UL http://genome.cshlp.org/content/16/9/1075.abstract 
AB Human embryonic stem (hES) cells originate during an embryonic period of active epigenetic remodeling. DNA methylation patterns are likely to be critical for their self-renewal and pluripotence. We compared the DNA methylation status of 1536 CpG sites (from 371 genes) in 14 independently isolated hES cell lines with five other cell types: 24 cancer cell lines, four adult stem cell populations, four lymphoblastoid cell lines, five normal human tissues, and an embryonal carcinoma cell line. We found that the DNA methylation profile clearly distinguished the hES cells from all of the other cell types. A subset of 49 CpG sites from 40 genes contributed most to the differences among cell types. Another set of 25 sites from 23 genes distinguished hES cells from normal differentiated cells and can be used as biomarkers to monitor differentiation. Our results indicate that hES cells have a unique epigenetic signature that may contribute to their developmental potential.