Single-cell RNA-seq reveals TCF7 as a novel regulator of human induced pluripotent stem cells differentiation to definitive endoderm

Endodermal cells differentiated from human induced pluripotent stem cells can produce multiple functional epithelial cells of vital organs and tissues that can be used for disease modeling as well as cell therapy. However, the detailed molecular mechanism of how hiPSCs differentiate towards definitive endoderm is not fully understood. By analyzing single-cell RNA sequencing data of definitive endoderm differentiation from human embryonic stem cells, transcription factor 7 (TCF7) was identified as a gene that transiently increases then decreases during differentiation of definitive endoderm. Endodermal cells differentiated from human induced pluripotent stem cells were transfected with si-TCF7 ,si-TBXT and si-NC and analyzed using scRNA seq.