Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) may be able to cure or alleviate the symptoms of various degenerative diseases. However, unresolved issues regarding apoptosis, maintaining function and tumor formation mean a prudent approach should be taken towards advancing ESCs into human clinical trials. The rhesus monkey provides the ideal model organism for developing strategies to prevent immune rejection and test the feasibility, safety and efficacy of ESC-based medical treatments. Transcriptional profiling of rhesus ESCs provides a foundation for future pre-clinical ESC research using non-human primates as the model organism. In this research we use microarray, immunocytochemistry, real-time and standard RT-PCR to characterize and transcriptionally profile rhesus monkey embryonic stem cells. We identify 367 rhesus monkey stemness genes, we demonstrate the high level (>85%) of conservation of rhesus monkey stemness gene expression across five different rhesus monkey embryonic stem cell lines, we demonstrate that rhesus monkey ESC lines maintain a pluripotent undifferentiated state over a wide range of Pou5f1 (Oct-4) expression levels and we compare rhesus monkey, human and murine stemness genes to identify the key mammalian stemness genes.
The supplementary tables list the genes that have been upregulated in each undifferentiated rhesus monkey embryonic stem cell line (GSM99998, GSM99999,GSM100000, GSM100001, GSM100002, GSM99965, GSM99966) in comparison analysis with the pooled differentiated embryonic stem cells (GSM99840). Supplemental Table 1 contains the comparison analysis for all 52,865 probe sets on the rhesus monkey gene chip, Supplemental Table 2 contains the rhesus monkey genes that were significantly upregulated (FC>3) in the ORMES-6 biological replicates, Supplemental Table 3 contains the rhesus monkey genes that were significantly upregulated (FC>3) in the pooled differentiated EBs and Supplemental Tables 4-8 represent genes that were significantly upregulated in ORMES 6A, 7, 9, 10 and 13 respectively. Supplemental Table 9 contains the RT-PCR primers used in this project.
Keywords: Rhesus monkey embryonic stem cell microarray
Overall design: We compare the transcriptomes of three biological replicates of ORMES6 (A, B and C) with pooled differentiated EBs to identify 367 rhesus monkey putative stemness genes. We demonstrate the high level (>85%) of conservation of rhesus monkey stemness gene expression across five different rhesus monkey embryonic stem cell lines (ORMES 6, 7, 9, 10, 13).
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