Mammalian CDC14 phosphatases control bivalent promoters and exit from stemness in pluripotent cells [snATAC-Seq]

CDC14 phosphatases are critical components of the cell cycle machinery that drives exit from mitosis in yeast. However, the two mammalian paralogs, CDC14A and CDC14B, are dispensable for cell cycle progression or exit, and their function remains unclear. By generating a double Cdc14a; Cdc14b -null mouse model, we report here that CDC14 phosphatases control cell differentiation in pluripotent cells, and their absence results in deficient development of the neural system. Lack of CDC14 impairs neural differentiation from embryonic stem cells (ESCs) accompanied by deficient induction of genes controlled by bivalent promoters. CDC14 directly dephosphorylates and destabilizes Undifferentiated embryonic Transcription Factor 1 (UTF1) during the exit from stemness. Multiomic single-cell analysis of differentiating ESCs suggest that increased UTF1 levels in the absence of CDC14 prevent the firing of bivalent promoters required for differentiation. These results, along recent data suggesting a critical role for cell cycle kinases in pluripotency, suggest that cell cycle kinase-phosphatase modules such as CDK-CDC14 are critical for linking cell cycle regulation and self-renewal, with a specific function for CDC14 phosphatases modulating key epigenetic regulators during the terminal exit from pluripotency. Wild-type and Cdc14ab KO mESC at day 0 (LIF-containing medium) and day 5 of the neural differentiation protocol were subjected to single-cell ATACseq coupled to single-cell RNAseq in the same cell