Validation of Baboon Pluripotent Cells as a Model for Translational Stem Cell Research [RNA-Seq]

To investigate the extent of similarity in epigenetic programming among human, baboon and mouse PSCs, we examined genome-wide patterns of four chromatin modifications (H3K4me3, H3K9me3, H3K27me3, H3K27ac) and DNA methylation in baboon iPSC and ESCs. We show that baboon pluripotent cells (PSCs) recapitulate key molecular features of human PSCs with much greater accuracy than that found in PSCs from non-primate species. Specifically, baboon and human PSCs exhibit significantly greater conservation of gene expression patterns, higher sequence and structural homology among pluripotency factors, more equivalent genome-wide patterns of histone and DNA methylation modifications, and similar maintenance of bivalent programming of developmental genes than that found between human and non-primate PSCs. Overall design: The gene expression profiles of baboon iPSC and ESC.