Single-cell RNA-sequencing reveals the existence of naive and primed pluripotency in pre-implantation rhesus monkey embryos
- Denghui Liu2,5,7,
- Xinyi Wang1,3,7,
- Dajian He1,3,5,7,
- Chunli Sun1,3,5,7,
- Xiechao He4,
- Lanzhen Yan4,
- Yizhou Li2,
- Jing-Dong J. Han2 and
- Ping Zheng1,3,4,6
- 1State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan 650223, China;
- 2Key Laboratory of Computational Biology, CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science, Collaborative Innovation Center for Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences–Max Planck Partner Institute for Computational Biology, Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China;
- 3Yunnan Key Laboratory of Animal Reproduction, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan 650223, China;
- 4Primate Research Center, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China;
- 5University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 101408, China;
- 6Center for Excellence in Animal Evolution and Genetics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China
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↵7 These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract
Naive pluripotency exists in epiblast cells of mouse pre-implantation embryos. However, whether the naive pluripotency is transient or nonexistent in primate embryos remains unclear. Using RNA-seq in single blastomeres from 16-cell embryos through to hatched blastocysts of rhesus monkey, we constructed the lineage segregation roadmap in which the specification of trophectoderm, epiblast, and primitive endoderm is initiated simultaneously at the early blastocyst stage. Importantly, we uncovered the existence of distinct pluripotent states in monkey pre-implantation embryos. At the early- and middle-blastocyst stages, the epiblast cells have the transcriptome features of naive pluripotency, whereas they display a continuum of primed pluripotency characteristics at the late and hatched blastocyst stages. Moreover, we identified potential regulators that might play roles in the transition from naive to primed pluripotency. Thus, our study suggests the transient existence of naive pluripotency in primates and proposes an ideal time window for derivation of primate embryonic stem cells with naive pluripotency.
Footnotes
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[Supplemental material is available for this article.]
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Article published online before print. Article, supplemental material, and publication date are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.233437.117.
- Received December 7, 2017.
- Accepted August 27, 2018.
This article is distributed exclusively by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the first six months after the full-issue publication date (see http://genome.cshlp.org/site/misc/terms.xhtml). After six months, it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
