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Copyright Published by Oxford University Press 2008 Defining Developmental Potency and Cell Lineage Trajectories by Expression Profiling of Differentiating Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells 1Developmental Genomics and Aging Section, Laboratory of Genetics, National Institute on Aging, NIH, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA 2Department of Stem Cell Biology, Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Kyoto 332-0012, Japan 3Laboratory for Pluripotent Cell Studies, RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology, Kobe, Hyogo 650-0047, Japan *To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel. Phone: +1 410-558-8359. Fax. +1 410-558-8331. E-mail: kom/at/mail.nih.gov †These authors contributed equally to this work. ‡Present address: Stem Cell and Drug Discovery Institute, Kyoto Research Park, Kyoto, Kyoto 600-8813, Japan. §Present address: DNA Chip Research Inc., Yokohama, Kanagawa 230-0045, Japan. Received December 1, 2008; Accepted December 11, 2008. The online version of this article has been published under an open access model. Users are entitled to use, reproduce, disseminate, or display the open access version of this article for non-commercial purposes provided that: the original authorship is properly and fully attributed; the Journal and Oxford University Press are attributed as the original place of publication with the correct citation details given; if an article is subsequently reproduced or disseminated not in its entirety but only in part or as a derivative work this must be clearly indicated. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.Abstract Biologists rely on morphology, function and specific markers to define the differentiation status of cells. Transcript profiling has expanded the repertoire of these markers by providing the snapshot of cellular status that reflects the activity of all genes. However, such data have been used only to assess relative similarities and differences of these cells. Here we show that principal component analysis of global gene expression profiles map cells in multidimensional transcript profile space and the positions of differentiating cells progress in a stepwise manner along trajectories starting from undifferentiated embryonic stem (ES) cells located in the apex. We present three ‘cell lineage trajectories’, which represent the differentiation of ES cells into the first three lineages in mammalian development: primitive endoderm, trophoblast and primitive ectoderm/neural ectoderm. The positions of the cells along these trajectories seem to reflect the developmental potency of cells and can be used as a scale for the potential of cells. Indeed, we show that embryonic germ cells and induced pluripotent cells are mapped near the origin of the trajectories, whereas mouse embryo fibroblast and fibroblast cell lines are mapped near the far end of the trajectories. We suggest that this method can be used as the non-operational semi-quantitative definition of cell differentiation status and developmental potency. Furthermore, the global expression profiles of cell lineages provide a framework for the future study of in vitro and in vivo cell differentiation. Keywords: embryonic stem, embryonic germ, induced pluripotent stem, mouse embryo fibroblast, embryonal carcinoma, retinoic acids, neural stem/progenitor, trophoblast stem, principal component analysis, leukemia inhibitory factor, epigenetic landscape, Waddington, developmental potency, cell lineage trajectory, gene expression profiling, DNA microarray analysis 1. Introduction Developmental biologists have long held a view that development naturally progresses from totipotent fertilized eggs with unlimited differentiation potential to terminally differentiated cells, like a ball rolling from high to low points on a slope as depicted in Waddington's epigenetic landscape.1 The epigenetic landscape also points to another important aspect of development, which is the emergence of different cell lineages during the development; cells in specific developmental lineages are thought to take discrete paths (‘chreodes’) on the imaginary slope. Analogy of cell's developmental potency to the potential energy is thus widely accepted2,3 This analogy is also relevant to the fact that converting differentiated cells into pluripotent cells is difficult. In mammals, nuclear transplantation (cloning)4,5 had been the only way to achieve such a ‘up-hill battle’ reprogramming, until the successful production of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells by infecting MEFs with retroviruses carrying expression cassettes for four genes (Myc, Pou5f1, Sox2 and Klf4).6 Notwithsanding its importance, the potency has only been defined operationally by in vitro and in vivo cell differentiation assays as ‘the total of all fates of a cell or tissue region which can be achieved by any environmental manipulation'.7 Nuclear transplantation experiments, where the success rate gradually decreases according to developmental stages of donor cells, provide yet another operational definition of developmental potential.8–10 We previously showed a possibility to derive a scale of developmental potency from the global gene expression (transcript) profile data, but the data could not be that quantitative because of the use of a limited number of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) for the analysis.11 The work also did not address the issue of cell linege separations. Mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells12,13 and embryonic germ (EG) cells14,15 are prototypical stem cells. These cells can be maintained as undifferentiated state in culture (self-renewal) and have the capacity to differentiate into essentially all the cell types (pluripotency). Therefore, these pluripotent stem cells provide tractable systems to study the developmental potency and cell lineage separation. It has been shown that the manipulation of cell culture condition or a single-gene expression level can differentiate ES cells into relatively homogenous cell population that are similar to the first three lineages in mammalian development:16 primitive ectoderm/neural ectoderm,17,18 trophoblast19,20 and primitive endoderm.21 In the first system, ES cells are cultured in monolayer in N2B27 medium, which drives undifferentiated ES cells into neural lineages.17 Previous DNA microarray analysis indicates that this in vitro ES cell differentiation process mimics in vivo cell differentiation to primitive ectoderm, neural ectoderm and subsequently neurons/glia cells.18 In the second system, ES cells are engineered to downregulate Pou5f1 (Oct3/4, Oct4) expression in a tetracycline-controllable manner (ZHBTc4 cell line19). It has been shown that repression of Pou5f1 induces the differentiation of ES cells into trophoblast lineage.19,20 In the third system, ES cells that are engineered to overexpress Gata6 in a dexamethasone-inducible manner differentiate into primitive endoderm (extraembryonic endoderm).21 Although the analyses of these ES cell differentiation systems have revealed the detailed changes of gene expression patterns, it remains to see whether the global comparison among these individual systems provide any further insights into developmental potency and cell lineage separation. Here we show that principal component analysis (PCA), which can reduce the dimensionality of the gene expression profiles,22 maps cells in a multidimensional transcript profile space where the positions of differentiating cells progress in a stepwise manner along trajectories starting from undifferentiated ES cells located in the apex to the first three lineages in mammalian development: primitive endoderm, trophoblast and primitive ectoderm/neural ectoderm. Furthermore, EG cells and iPS cells are mapped near the origin of the trajectories, whereas mouse embryo fibroblast (MEF) and fibroblast cell lines are mapped near the far end of the trajectories. 2. Materials and methods 2.1. Cells and RNAs For the majority of cells used in this study, we used a stock of Cy3-labeled cRNA samples that were used in our previous studies. The details of each cell types, their culture conditions, RNA extractions and Cy3-labeling can be found in the main text of this manuscript and in earlier publications.18,20,23–25 Cells cultured for this study and the culture conditions are as follows. G0–G5 cells: Production and characterization of 5G6GR ES cell clones that are engineered to overexpress Gata6 in a dexamethasone-inducible manner are described previously.21 ES cells were harvested every 24 h (Day 0–5) during differentiation in the presence of 100 mM dexamethasone (Sigma). F0–F5 cells: Undifferentiated F9 EC cells (ATCC number: CRL-1720) were treated with 100 nM all-trans-retinoic acid (RA, Sigma) and 1 mM dibutyryl cAMP (dbcAMP, Sigma) on adherent condition as reported.26 Photos of F9 EC cells during differentiation are available as Supplementary Fig. S1 of the published paper.27 F9 cells were harvested every 24 h (Day 0–5) during the differentiation. Both iPS-Fbxo156 and iPS-Nanog28 were cultured on the STO feeder cells as described previously. To remove the feeder cells, the iPS cells were passaged twice on the gelatin-coated culture dish and harvested for RNA extraction. NIH3T3, STO, MEF_BL6 and MEF_DR4 were cultured under the standard condition and harvested for RNA extraction. Total RNAs isolated for this study were labeled with Cy3-dye and used for the DNA microarray hybridization. 2.2. Microarray data analysis DNA microarray analysis was carried out as described previously,18 except for the addition of ES cell total RNAs to the Universal Mouse Reference RNA (UMRR) and the use of a 4 × 44K microarray platform. In our previous DNA microarray studies,23 we used the Universal Mouse Reference RNA (UMRR: Stratagene), which is a mixture of total RNAs from 11 different mouse cell lines. However, to increase the representation of genes expressed in ES cells for the current study, we mixed the UMRR with total RNAs from ES cells (MC1, derived from 129S6/SvEvTac strain) cultured in the undifferentiated condition with LIF at 2:1 ratio. These UMRR plus ES RNAs were labeled with Cy5-dye, mixed with Cy3-labeled samples and used for DNA microarray hybridization. To maximize the uniformity of the microarray data, all the samples, including the ones analyzed by DNA microarray previously, were hybridized to the same platform (the NIA Mouse 44K Microarray v3.023 manufactured by Agilent Technologies #015 087). The intensity of each gene feature per array was extracted from scanned microarray images using Feature Extraction 9.5.1.1 software (Agilent Technologies) as described previously.23 Hierarchical clustering analysis and PCA (see Section 2.3) were carried out using an application developed in-house to perform ANOVA and other analyses (NIA Array Analysis software; http://lgsun.grc.nia.nih.gov/ANOVA/).22 Three-dimensional PCA figures were generated using the virtual reality modeling language (VRML) function of the NIA Array Analysis software22 and visualized by Cortona Vrml client (http://www.parallelgraphics.com/products/cortona/). To produce plots and lists of genes for Fig. 2
2.3. Principal component analysis Principal component analysis is a statistical method to find major patterns in data variation, which is increasingly used for the analysis of gene expression microarray data.22,30–32 Each principal component (PC) is a linear combination of log-transformed expression values of all genes, and all components are orthogonal, i.e. mutually independent. The first few PCs, which explain most of the observed variance, are the most important; the remaining PCs often represent random fluctuations. Therefore, by plotting data against the first two or three PCs, one can reduce the dimensionality of the data without losing much of information. Contribution of genes to each PC (which may be positive or negative) is determined by singular value decomposition algorithm applied to the covariance matrix. Knowing these contributions, the entire gene expression profile of a given cell type can be represented by a single point in a two- or three-dimensional space. If two cell types are represented by closely located points in the PCA plot, global gene expression profiles of these cells are very similar. In contrast, if corresponding points in the PCA plot are far apart, their global expression profiles are very different. The detailed discussion of PCA plots and interpretation of DNA microarray data can be found in the previous publication.32 3. Results and discussion To obtain accurate, comprehensive and comparable expression profiles, we carried out all the DNA microarray analyses within a few weeks using the same platform containing essentially all genes encoded on the mouse genome.23 Although two ES cell differentiation systems have been profiled previously using the earlier version of the array platform,18,20 we carried out the DNA microarray analysis again for the data consistency. In the first system, ES cells are cultured in monolayer in N2B27 medium for 6 days, which drives undifferentiated ES cells into neural lineages.17 RNAs were isolated and analyzed every day during the induction and RNAs (N0–N6: Fig. 1
We first carried out the hierarchical clustering analysis of these microarray data. Although the hierarchical clustering analysis grouped cells mostly into each differentiation system (Fig. 1 What do these trajectories represent? Because the transcript profile space is constructed from the expression patterns of genes, the changes in gene expression patterns are reflected in the changes in the position of a cell. To find gene expression changes that are correlated with these trajectories, we first drew a line for each cell lineage so that the squared distances from the cells of the lineage were minimized. The locations of other cell types, such as TS and NS, were projected onto the closest lineage trajectory (Fig. 1 This notion was further supported by examining the locations of cells cultured and profiled independently in the transcript profile space: P19 EC cells before (P0) and after 4 days of RA induction (P4); NS cells derived from adult mouse brain and their differentiated cells18 (DC); and TS cells25,33 and E12.5 PL.25 These cells were mapped onto the transcript profile space based on their global gene expression profiles. As we expected, we found that P0, P4, NS and DC mapped near the primitive ectoderm/neural lineage trajectory (Figs 1 We also noticed that these cell lineage trajectories represent the gradual loss of developmental potency or potential of cells (Fig. 1 Hierarchical clustering analysis of the microarray data of all 44 cell types (original 32 cell types and 12 additional cell types; see Supplementary data for detail) showed that undifferentiated ES and EG cells were clustered together with iPS cells, whereas NIH3T3 fibroblast cells, STO stromal cells and MEF cells were clustered together (Fig. 3
The work presented here provides a concept and a method to visualize and quantitate the differentiation status and developmental potency of cells. The PCA figures (Figs 1 Funding This work was entirely supported by the Intramural Research Program of National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Aging (Z01 AG000662). [Supplementary Data]
Acknowledgements We thank Drs. Tilo Kunath and Janet Rossant for providing RNAs of TS, and Dr. Angelo Vescovi for providing RNAs of NS and DC, Dr. Brigid Hogan for providing TG cells and Dr. Colin Stewart for providing EG1 cells. We also thank Dawood Dudekula and Yong Qian for assisting data analysis. Footnotes Edited by Osamu Ohara References 1. Waddington C. H. The Strategy of the Genes. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd; 1957. 2. Slack J. M. Conrad Hal Waddington: the last Renaissance biologist? Nat. Rev. Genet. 2002;3:889–895. [PubMed] 3. Andrews P. W. From teratocarcinomas to embryonic stem cells. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 2002;357:405–417. [PubMed] 4. Campbell K. H., McWhir J., Ritchie W. A., Wilmut I. Sheep cloned by nuclear transfer from a cultured cell line. Nature. 1996;380:64–66. [PubMed] 5. Wakayama T., Perry A. C., Zuccotti M., Johnson K. R., Yanagimachi R. Full-term development of mice from enucleated oocytes injected with cumulus cell nuclei. 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Nat Rev Genet. 2002 Nov; 3(11):889-95.
[Nat Rev Genet. 2002]Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2002 Apr 29; 357(1420):405-17.
[Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2002]Nature. 1996 Mar 7; 380(6569):64-6.
[Nature. 1996]Nature. 1998 Jul 23; 394(6691):369-74.
[Nature. 1998]Cell. 2006 Aug 25; 126(4):663-76.
[Cell. 2006]Nature. 1981 Jul 9; 292(5819):154-6.
[Nature. 1981]Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1981 Dec; 78(12):7634-8.
[Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1981]Cell. 1992 Sep 4; 70(5):841-7.
[Cell. 1992]Nature. 1992 Oct 8; 359(6395):550-1.
[Nature. 1992]Gene Expr Patterns. 2007 Apr; 7(5):558-73.
[Gene Expr Patterns. 2007]Bioinformatics. 2005 May 15; 21(10):2548-9.
[Bioinformatics. 2005]Stem Cells. 2006 Apr; 24(4):889-95.
[Stem Cells. 2006]PLoS One. 2006 Dec 20; 1():e26.
[PLoS One. 2006]Genome Biol. 2005; 6(7):R61.
[Genome Biol. 2005]Genome Res. 2002 Dec; 12(12):1921-8.
[Genome Res. 2002]BMC Dev Biol. 2007 Jul 3; 7():80.
[BMC Dev Biol. 2007]Stem Cells. 2006 Apr; 24(4):889-95.
[Stem Cells. 2006]Genome Biol. 2005; 6(7):R61.
[Genome Biol. 2005]Bioinformatics. 2005 May 15; 21(10):2548-9.
[Bioinformatics. 2005]Bioinformatics. 2005 May 15; 21(10):2548-9.
[Bioinformatics. 2005]PLoS One. 2008; 3(11):e3709.
[PLoS One. 2008]Dev Dyn. 2006 Sep; 235(9):2437-48.
[Dev Dyn. 2006]Genome Biol. 2005; 6(7):R61.
[Genome Biol. 2005]Stem Cells. 2006 Apr; 24(4):889-95.
[Stem Cells. 2006]PLoS One. 2006 Dec 20; 1():e26.
[PLoS One. 2006]Nat Biotechnol. 2003 Feb; 21(2):183-6.
[Nat Biotechnol. 2003]Nat Genet. 2000 Apr; 24(4):372-6.
[Nat Genet. 2000]Dev Dyn. 2006 Sep; 235(9):2437-48.
[Dev Dyn. 2006]Dev Dyn. 2006 Sep; 235(9):2437-48.
[Dev Dyn. 2006]Stem Cells. 2006 Apr; 24(4):889-95.
[Stem Cells. 2006]Genome Res. 2002 Dec; 12(12):1921-8.
[Genome Res. 2002]Science. 1998 Dec 11; 282(5396):2072-5.
[Science. 1998]J Cell Biol. 1982 Aug; 94(2):253-62.
[J Cell Biol. 1982]Cell. 1980 Sep; 21(2):347-55.
[Cell. 1980]Dev Biol. 2007 Jul 15; 307(2):446-59.
[Dev Biol. 2007]Cell. 2006 Aug 25; 126(4):663-76.
[Cell. 2006]Nature. 2007 Jul 19; 448(7151):313-7.
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