Transcriptomic Signature of Trophoblast Differentiation in a Human Embryonic Stem Cell Model

Identification of genes involved in trophoblast differentiation is of great interest in understanding cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in placental development and is relevant clinically to fetal development, fertility, and maternal health. To understand, on a global scale, changes in the transcriptome during the differentiation of hESCs down the trophoblast lineage, a large-scale microarray analysis was performed. This work provides an in vitro functional genomic model with which to identify genes involved in trophoblast development. We investigated differentiation of human embryonic stemcells (hESCs) down the trophoblast lineage by culture with bone morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP4) over a 10-day period and analyze the cell every 2-days.