Direct Reprogramming of Human Neural Stem Cells by OCT4

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells have been generated from mouse and human somatic cells by ectopic expression of the four transcription factors (OCT4, SOX2, c-MYC, KLF4). We previously reported that Oct4 alone is sufficient to directly reprogram adult mouse neural stem cells (NSCs) to iPS cells. Here, we report the generation of one-factor (1F) human iPS from human NSCs (1F hNiPS) by ectopic expression of Oct4 alone. 1F hNiPS cells resemble human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) in global gene expression profiles, epigenetic status and pluripotency in vitro and in vivo. These findings demonstrate that the transcription factor OCT4 is sufficient to reprogram human NSCs to pluripotency. 1F iPS cell generation will accelerate this field further towards understanding reprogramming and generating patient-specific pluripotent stem cells. For transcriptome profiling, 400 ng of total DNA-free RNA was used as input for labelled cRNA synthesis (Illumina TotalPrep RNA Amplification Kit - Ambion) following the manufacturer's instructions (IVT: 10h). Quality-checked cRNA samples were hybridized as biological or technical duplicates for 18 h onto HumanRef-8 v3 expression BeadChips (Illumina), washed, stained, and scanned following guidelines and using materials / instrumentation supplied / suggested by the manufacturer. Five sample types were analyzed, each one of them in duplicate. hNSC: human fetal neural stem cells (duplicates); 1F hNiPS: One factor (Oct4) human iPS cells from hNSCs, hand-picked cols (duplicates); 2F hNiPS: Two factors (Oct4,Klf4) human iPS cells from hNSCs, hand-picked cols (duplicates); H9 hESC: H9 human ESCs grown on low-density CF1 MEFs (duplicates); H1 hESC: H1 human ESCs grown on low-density CF1 MEFs (duplicates).