技术资料

Rett syndrome (RTT) is a progressive neurologic disorder representing one of the most common causes of mental retardation in females. To date mutations in three genes have been associated with this condition. Classic RTT is caused by mutations in the MECP2 gene,whereas variants can be due to mutations in either MECP2 or FOXG1 or CDKL5. Mutations in CDKL5 have been identified both in females with the early onset seizure variant of RTT and in males with X-linked epileptic encephalopathy. CDKL5 is a kinase protein highly expressed in neurons,but its exact function inside the cell is unknown. To address this issue we established a human cellular model for CDKL5-related disease using the recently developed technology of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). iPSCs can be expanded indefinitely and differentiated in vitro into many different cell types,including neurons. These features make them the ideal tool to study disease mechanisms directly on the primarily affected neuronal cells. We derived iPSCs from fibroblasts of one female with p.Q347X and one male with p.T288I mutation,affected by early onset seizure variant and X-linked epileptic encephalopathy,respectively. We demonstrated that female CDKL5-mutated iPSCs maintain X-chromosome inactivation and clones express either the mutant CDKL5 allele or the wild-type allele that serve as an ideal experimental control. Array CGH indicates normal isogenic molecular karyotypes without detection of de novo CNVs in the CDKL5-mutated iPSCs. Furthermore,the iPS cells can be differentiated into neurons and are thus suitable to model disease pathogenesis in vitro. View Publication

Identification of new techniques to express proteins into mammal cells is of particular interest for both research and medical purposes. The present study describes the use of engineered vesicles to deliver exogenous proteins into human cells. We show that overexpression of the spike glycoprotein of the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV-G) in human cells induces the release of fusogenic vesicles named gesicles. Biochemical and functional studies revealed that gesicles incorporated proteins from producer cells and could deliver them to recipient cells. This protein-transduction method allows the direct transport of cytoplasmic,nuclear or surface proteins in target cells. This was demonstrated by showing that the TetR transactivator and the receptor for the murine leukemia virus (MLV) envelope [murine cationic amino acid transporter-1 (mCAT-1)] were efficiently delivered by gesicles in various cell types. We further shows that gesicle-mediated transfer of mCAT-1 confers to human fibroblasts a robust permissiveness to ecotropic vectors,allowing the generation of human-induced pluripotent stem cells in level 2 biosafety facilities. This highlights the great potential of mCAT-1 gesicles to increase the safety of experiments using retro/lentivectors. Besides this,gesicles is a versatile tool highly valuable for the nongenetic delivery of functions such as transcription factors or genome engineering agents. View Publication

Self-renewal is a complex biological process necessary for maintaining the pluripotency of embryonic stem cells (ESCs). Recent studies have used global proteomic techniques to identify proteins that associate with the master regulators Oct4,Nanog and Sox2 in ESCs or in ESCs during the early stages of differentiation. Through an unbiased proteomic screen,Banf1 was identified as a Sox2-associated protein. Banf1 has been shown to be essential for worm and fly development but,until now,its role in mammalian development and ESCs has not been explored. In this study,we examined the effect of knocking down Banf1 on ESCs. We demonstrate that the knockdown of Banf1 promotes the differentiation of mouse ESCs and decreases the survival of both mouse and human ESCs. For mouse ESCs,we demonstrate that knocking down Banf1 promotes their differentiation into cells that exhibit markers primarily associated with mesoderm and trophectoderm. Interestingly,knockdown of Banf1 disrupts the survival of human ESCs without significantly reducing the expression levels of the master regulators Sox2,Oct4 and Nanog or inducing the expression of markers of differentiation. Furthermore,we determined that the knockdown of Banf1 alters the cell cycle distribution of both human and mouse ESCs by causing an uncharacteristic increase in the proportion of cells in the G2-M phase of the cell cycle. View Publication

Stem cells hold great promise for therapies aimed at regenerating damaged tissue,drug screening and studying in vitro models of human disease. However,many challenges remain before these applications can become a reality. One such challenge is developing chemically defined and scalable culture conditions for derivation and expansion of clinically viable human pluripotent stem cells,as well as controlling their differentiation with high specificity. Interaction of stem cells with their extracellular microenvironment plays an important role in determining their differentiation commitment and functions. Regenerative medicine approaches integrating cell-matrix and cell-cell interactions,and soluble factors could lead to development of robust microenvironments to control various cellular responses. Indeed,several of these recent developments have provided significant insight into the design of microenvironments that can elicit the targeted cellular response. In this article,we will focus on some of these developments with an emphasis on matrix-mediated expansion of human pluripotent stem cells while maintaining their pluripotency. We will also discuss the role of matrix-based cues and cell-cell interactions in the form of soluble signals in directing stem cell differentiation into musculoskeletal lineages. View Publication

Methylation of cytosine is a DNA modification associated with gene repression. Recently,a novel cytosine modification,5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC) has been discovered. Here we examine 5-hmC distribution during mammalian development and in cellular systems,and show that the developmental dynamics of 5-hmC are different from those of 5-methylcytosine (5-mC); in particular 5-hmC is enriched in embryonic contexts compared to adult tissues. A detectable 5-hmC signal appears in pre-implantation development starting at the zygote stage,where the paternal genome is subjected to a genome-wide hydroxylation of 5-mC,which precisely coincides with the loss of the 5-mC signal in the paternal pronucleus. Levels of 5-hmC are high in cells of the inner cell mass in blastocysts,and the modification colocalises with nestin-expressing cell populations in mouse post-implantation embryos. Compared to other adult mammalian organs,5-hmC is strongly enriched in bone marrow and brain,wherein high 5-hmC content is a feature of both neuronal progenitors and post-mitotic neurons. We show that high levels of 5-hmC are not only present in mouse and human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and lost during differentiation,as has been reported previously,but also reappear during the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells; thus 5-hmC enrichment correlates with a pluripotent cell state. Our findings suggest that apart from the cells of neuronal lineages,high levels of genomic 5-hmC are an epigenetic feature of embryonic cell populations and cellular pluri- and multi-lineage potency. To our knowledge,5-hmC represents the first epigenetic modification of DNA discovered whose enrichment is so cell-type specific. View Publication

Microfluidic systems create significant opportunities to establish highly controlled microenvironmental conditions for screening pluripotent stem cell fate. However,since cell fate is crucially dependent on this microenvironment,it remains unclear as to whether continual perfusion of culture medium supports pluripotent stem cell maintenance in feeder-free,chemically defined conditions,and further,whether optimum perfusion conditions exist for subsequent use of human embryonic stem cell (hESCs) in other microfludic systems. To investigate this,we designed microbioreactors based on resistive flow to screen hESCs under a linear range of flowrates. We report that at low rates (conditions where glucose transport is convection-limited with Péclet number textless1),cells are affected by apparent nutrient depletion and waste accumulation,evidenced by reduced cell expansion and altered morphology. At higher rates,cells are spontaneously washed out,and display morphological changes which may be indicative of early-stage differentiation. However,between these thresholds exists a narrow range of flowrates in which hESCs expand comparably to the equivalent static culture system,with regular morphology and maintenance of the pluripotency marker TG30 in textgreater95% of cells over 7 days. For MEL1 hESCs the optimum flowrate also coincided with the time-averaged medium exchange rate in static cultures,which may therefore provide a good first estimate of appropriate perfusion rates. Overall,we demonstrate hESCs can be maintained in microbioreactors under continual flow for up to 7 days,a critical outcome for the future development of microbioreactor-based screening systems and assays for hESC culture. View Publication

Cell-based therapies have generated great interest in the scientific and medical communities,and stem cells in particular are very appealing for regenerative medicine,drug screening and other biomedical applications. These unspecialized cells have unlimited self-renewal capacity and the remarkable ability to produce mature cells with specialized functions,such as blood cells,nerve cells or cardiac muscle. However,the actual number of cells that can be obtained from available donors is very low. One possible solution for the generation of relevant numbers of cells for several applications is to scale-up the culture of these cells in vitro. This review describes recent developments in the cultivation of stem cells in bioreactors,particularly considerations regarding critical culture parameters,possible bioreactor configurations,and integration of novel technologies in the bioprocess development stage. We expect that this review will provide updated and detailed information focusing on the systematic production of stem cell products in compliance with regulatory guidelines,while using robust and cost-effective approaches. View Publication

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We present a method to perform absolute quantification of glycogen in human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) in situ based on the use of Raman microspectroscopy. The proposed quantification method was validated by comparison to a commonly used commercial glycogen assay kit. With Raman microspectroscopy,we could obtain the glycogen content of hESCs faster and apparently more accurately than with the kit. In addition,glycogen distributions across a colony could be obtained. Raman spectroscopy can provide reliable estimates of the in situ glycogen content in hESCs,and this approach should also be extensible to their other biochemical constituents as well as to other cell types. View Publication

Patient-specific human induced pluripotent stem (hiPS) cells not only provide a promising tool for cellular disease models in general,but also open up the opportunity to establish cell-type-specific systems for personalized medicine. One of the crucial prerequisites for these strategies,however,is a fast and efficient reprogramming strategy from easy accessible somatic cell populations. Keratinocytes from plucked human hair had been introduced as a superior cell source for reprogramming purposes compared with the widely used skin fibroblasts. The starting cell population is,however,limited and thereby further optimization in terms of time,efficiency,and quality is inevitable. Here we show that rat embryonic fibroblasts (REFs) should replace mouse embryonic fibroblasts as feeder cells in the reprogramming process. REFs enable a significantly more efficient reprogramming procedure as shown by colony number and total amount of SSEA4-positive cells. We successfully produced keratinocyte-derived hiPS (k-hiPS) cells from various donors. The arising k-hiPS cells display the hallmarks of pluripotency such as expression of stem cell markers and differentiation into all 3 germ layers. The increased reprogramming efficiency using REFs as a feeder layer occurred independent of the proliferation rate in the parental keratinocytes and acts,at least in part,in a non-cell autonomous way by secreting factors known to facilitate pluripotency such as Tgfb1,Inhba and Grem1. Hence,we provide an easy to use and highly efficient reprogramming system that could be very useful for a broad application to generate human iPS cells. View Publication

BACKGROUND: Human pluripotent stem cells have the ability to generate all cell types present in the adult organism,therefore harboring great potential for the in vitro study of differentiation and for the development of cell-based therapies. Nonetheless their use may prove challenging as incomplete differentiation of these cells might lead to tumoregenicity. Interestingly,many cancer types have been reported to display metabolic modifications with features that might be similar to stem cells. Understanding the metabolic properties of human pluripotent stem cells when compared to their differentiated counterparts can thus be of crucial importance. Furthermore recent data has stressed distinct features of different human pluripotent cells lines,namely when comparing embryo-derived human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs) reprogrammed from somatic cells.backslashnbackslashnMETHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We compared the energy metabolism of hESCs,IPSCs,and their somatic counterparts. Focusing on mitochondria,we tracked organelle localization and morphology. Furthermore we performed gene expression analysis of several pathways related to the glucose metabolism,including glycolysis,the pentose phosphate pathway and the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle. In addition we determined oxygen consumption rates (OCR) using a metabolic extracellular flux analyzer,as well as total intracellular ATP levels by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Finally we explored the expression of key proteins involved in the regulation of glucose metabolism.backslashnbackslashnCONCLUSIONS/FINDINGS: Our results demonstrate that,although the metabolic signature of IPSCs is not identical to that of hESCs,nonetheless they cluster with hESCs rather than with their somatic counterparts. ATP levels,lactate production and OCR revealed that human pluripotent cells rely mostly on glycolysis to meet their energy demands. Furthermore,our work points to some of the strategies which human pluripotent stem cells may use to maintain high glycolytic rates,such as high levels of hexokinase II and inactive pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH). View Publication

The limited ability of the heart to regenerate has prompted development of new systems to produce cardiomyocytes for therapeutics. While differentiation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) into cardiomyocytes has been well documented,the process remains inefficient and/or expensive,and progress would be facilitated by better understanding the early genetic events that cause cardiac specification. By maintaining a transgenic cardiac-specific MYH6-monomeric red fluorescent protein (mRFP) reporter hESC line in conditions that promote pluripotency,we tested the ability of combinations of 15 genes to induce cardiac specification. Screening identified GATA4 plus TBX5 as the minimum requirement to activate the cardiac gene regulatory network and produce mRFP(+) cells,while a combination of GATA4,TBX5,NKX2.5,and BAF60c (GTNB) was necessary to generate beating cardiomyocytes positive for cTnI and α-actinin. Including the chemotherapeutic agent,Ara-C,from day 10 of induced differentiation enriched for cTnI/α-actinin double positive cells to 45%. Transient expression of GTNB for 5-7 days was necessary to activate the cardiogenesis through progenitor intermediates in a manner consistent with normal heart development. This system provides a route to test the effect of different factors on human cardiac differentiation and will be useful in understanding the network failures that underlie disease phenotypes. View Publication