CHD8 safeguards early neuroectoderm differentiation in human ESCs and protects from apoptosis during neurogenesis

To understand the function of CHD8 in human ESC and neural differentiation, we generated the CHD8 knockout human ESCs and characterize the effect of loss-of-function of CHD8 on pluripotency maintenance and neuroectoderm determination by utilizing an efficient neuroectoderm differentiation protocol. Samples from hESC, CHD8KO_hESC and their derived-neural progenitor cells (hNPC) were collected for high-throughput sequencing with at least two replicates for each sample. Differentially expressed genes analysis showed loss of CHD8 affect the genes in ESC and NPC. Overall design: We performed RNA-seq using hESCs and hESC-derived neural progenitor cells (hNPC) and CHD8 KO hESCs and CHD8 KO hESC-derived neural progenitor cells (hESC four replicates and the others two replicates).