Analysis of miR-203 transient over-expression on stemness potential of pluripotent cells

The balance between pluripotency and differentiation is critical during development and regeneration. miR-203 is a microRNA previously involved in differentiation of different tissues as well as in tumor suppression in multiple malignancies. We show here that miR-203 is able to promote differentiation of embryonic stem (ES) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells without decreasing pluripotency. We have observed that transient expression of miR-203 significantly improves the efficiency of ES/iPS cells in the generation of chimeras and tetraploid complementation assays, in addition to inducing complex embryo-like structures when these pluripotent cells are injected in mice. In the present RNA seq, we intend to demonstrate that transient over-expression of miR-203 make pluripotent cells (IPSCs) more similar to ES cells, also in terms of their transcriptomic profile. The general idea was to analyze the transcriptomic proximity between miR-203 transiently-overexpressing IPSCs and ESCs. In this RNA seq, the gene expression of different clones was tested. Three independent pools of clones from three different experiments were represented in ES_WT_C1, C2 and C3. Three independent pools of clones from three independent experiments were represented in samples iPS_WT_C1, C2 and C3. The same applies to KI_DOX_C1, C2, C3, C4 (miR-203 cKI iPS cells transiently treated with DOX to induce miR-203 over-expression). The sample iPS_WT_MIMICS represents a pool of two independent experiments in which WT iPS cells were transiently transfected using 3p/5p miR-203 mimics. The pairs KI-N5 and KI_N5+DOX; KI_N9 and KI_N9+DOX represents two pairs of clones in which N5 and N9 have never been treated with DOX and the very same clones N5+DOX and N9+ DOX have been transiently treated with DOX to over-express miR-203 for 5 days.