BMP and Activin treatment of mouse extraembryonic endoderm (XEN) cells. Mus musculus

XEN cells are derived from the primitive endoderm of mouse blastocysts. In culture and in chimeras they exhibit properties of parietal endoderm. However, BMP signaling promotes XEN cells to form an epithelium and differentiate into visceral endoderm (VE). Of the several different subtypes of VE described, BMP induces a subtype that is most similar to the VE adjacent to the trophoblast-derived extraembryonic ectoderm. The experiment was performed to gain insight into genes regulated by BMP and activin in XEN cells, and also to more precisely define the VE subtypes formed in culture. Overall design: IM8A1 XEN cells were treated for 6 days with BMP2 (20 ng/ml, R&D Systems), activin A (30 ng/ml, Peprotech), both, or neither in GMEM + 10% fetal bovine serum.