Insulin fine-tunes self-renewal pathways governing naive pluripotency and extra-embryonic endoderm

Kathryn G. V. Anderson, William B. Hamilton, Fabian V. Roske, Ajuna Azad, Teresa E. Knudsen, Maurice a. Canham, Lesley M. Forrester, Joshua M. Brickman

21 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Signalling downstream of Activin/Nodal (ActA) and Wnt can induce endoderm differentiation and also support self-renewal in pluripotent cells. Here we find that these apparently contradictory activities are fine-tuned by insulin. In the absence of insulin, the combination of these cytokines supports endoderm in a context-dependent manner. When applied to naive pluripotent cells that resemble peri-implantation embryos, ActA and Wnt induce extra-embryonic primitive endoderm (PrE), whereas when applied to primed pluripotent epiblast stem cells (EpiSC), these cytokines induce gastrulation-stage embryonic definitive endoderm. In naive embryonic stem cell culture, we find that insulin complements LIF signalling to support self-renewal; however, when it is removed, LIF, ActA and Wnt signalling not only induce PrE differentiation, but also support its expansion. Self-renewal of these PrE cultures is robust and, on the basis of gene expression, these cells resemble early blastocyst-stage PrE, a naive endoderm state able to make both visceral and parietal endoderm.

Original languageEnglish
JournalNature Cell Biology
Volume19
Issue number10
Pages (from-to)1164-1177
ISSN1465-7392
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 29 Sept 2017

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