Cell
Volume 168, Issue 3, 26 January 2017, Pages 473-486.e15
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Article
Interspecies Chimerism with Mammalian Pluripotent Stem Cells

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2016.12.036Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Naive rat PSCs robustly contribute to live rat-mouse chimeras

  • A versatile CRISPR-Cas9 mediated interspecies blastocyst complementation system

  • Naive rodent PSCs show no chimeric contribution to post-implantation pig embryos

  • Chimerism is observed with some human iPSCs in post-implantation pig embryos

Summary

Interspecies blastocyst complementation enables organ-specific enrichment of xenogenic pluripotent stem cell (PSC) derivatives. Here, we establish a versatile blastocyst complementation platform based on CRISPR-Cas9-mediated zygote genome editing and show enrichment of rat PSC-derivatives in several tissues of gene-edited organogenesis-disabled mice. Besides gaining insights into species evolution, embryogenesis, and human disease, interspecies blastocyst complementation might allow human organ generation in animals whose organ size, anatomy, and physiology are closer to humans. To date, however, whether human PSCs (hPSCs) can contribute to chimera formation in non-rodent species remains unknown. We systematically evaluate the chimeric competency of several types of hPSCs using a more diversified clade of mammals, the ungulates. We find that naïve hPSCs robustly engraft in both pig and cattle pre-implantation blastocysts but show limited contribution to post-implantation pig embryos. Instead, an intermediate hPSC type exhibits higher degree of chimerism and is able to generate differentiated progenies in post-implantation pig embryos.

Keywords

pluripotent stem cells
interspecies chimera
CRISPR-Cas9
zygote genome editing
interspecies blastocyst complementation
organ and tissue generation
human naïve pluripotent stem cells
human-pig chimeric embryo
human-cattle chimeric embryo

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Present address: Graduate School of Agriculture, Department of Advanced Bioscience, Kinki University, 3327-204 Nakamachi, Nara 631-8505, Japan

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