Histone Demethylase-Assisted Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer Facilitates Derivation of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells

The extremely low efficiency of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) derivation using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) limits potential application. Blastocyst formation from human SCNT embryos occurs at a low rate and with only some oocyte donors. We previously showed in mice that reduction of histone H3 lysine 9 trimethylation (H3K9me3) through ectopic expression of the H3K9me3 demethylase Kdm4d greatly improves SCNT embryo development. Here we show that overexpression of a related H3K9me3 demethylase KDM4A improves human SCNT, and that, as in mice, H3K9me3 in the human somatic cell genome is an SCNT reprogramming barrier. Overexpression of KDM4A significantly improves the blastocyst formation rate in human SCNT embryos by facilitating transcriptional reprogramming, allowing derivation of NTESCs from all oocyte donors tested using adult AMD patient somatic nuclei donors. This conserved mechanistic insight has potential applications for improving SCNT in a variety of contexts, including regenerative medicine. Overall design: Here we perform RNA-seq based transcriptome profiling in human Donor (fibroblast cells), in vitro fertilized embryos at 8-cell stages (IVF_8Cell), somatic cell nuclear transfer embryos at 8-cell stages (SCNT_8Cell), SCNT assisted by KDM4A 8-cell embryos (SCNT_KDM4A_8Cell). Besides, we also perform RNA-seq in Control human ES cells (CTR_hES) and SCNT assisted by KDM4A derived human ES cells (NTK) with duplicates. 

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Chung YG, Matoba S, Liu Y, Eum JH, Lu F, Jiang W, Lee JE, Sepilian V, Cha KY, Lee DR, Zhang Y