During mammalian embryonic development, the primitive streak is initiates the differentiation of pluripotent epiblast cells into germ layers. Pluripotency can be reacquired in committed somatic cells using a combination of handful transcription factors, such as OCT3/4, SOX2, KLF4 and c-MYC (hereafter referred to as OSKM), albeit with low efficiency . Here we show that, during the OSKM-induced reprogramming process toward pluripotency in human cells, intermediate cells transiently show gene expression profiles resembling mesendoderm, which is a major component of the primitive streak. Based on these findings, we discover that forkhead box H1 (FOXH1), a transcription factor required for anterior primitive streak specification during early development, significantly enhances the reprogramming efficiency of human fibroblasts by promoting their maturation, including the mesenchymal to epithelial transition and the activation of late pluripotent markers. These results demonstrate that during the reprogramming process, human somatic cells go through a transient state that resembles mesendoderm.
Overall design
Human differentiated progeny derived from pluripotent stem cells, N=13 Human undifferentiated pluripotent stem cells, N=6 Transgenic ESC line, N=6 Human tissues, N=29 Human tissue-derived cells, N=20 Human nascent reprogrammed cells, N=95 Mouse cells, N=12
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