Abscission couples cell division to embryonic stem cell fate

This study was designed to investigate how the cell cycle phase impacts the kinetics of exit from pluripotency of mouse embryonic stem cells (mESC). mESC maintained in naïve medium conditions (2i) then sorted based on cell cycle phase before replating in self-renewing or differentiating media for 6hours, followed by single-cell RNA sequencing. Clustering of cells based on their expression of naive pluripotency genes indicate that cells that exit early in the cell cycle downregulate pluripotency genes faster than the bulk population. This study provides evidence that cell cycle phase is important in determining the timing of exit from pluripotency. mESC underwent sorting based on forward and side scatter to specifically extract small cells (exit of mitosis and G1). An ungated population was used as control. Cells were replated in 2i (naïve medium) or N2B27 (differentiating medium) for 6hr, followed by single-cell sorting into 96 well plates for single-cell RNAseq. 1 plate (96 cells) of 2i and of N2B27 were sequenced with, in each plate, 24 small cells and 24 of an ungated population.