Derivation of porcine extra-embryonic endoderm cell lines reveals distinct signaling pathway and multipotency states

We detected the gene expression differences between porcine extra-embryonic endoderm cells and naïve like and primed porcine ESCs. Gene expression of porcine extra-embryonic endoderm cells was distinct with porcine naïve like and primed embryonic stem cells. Pearson correlation analysis confirmed that porcine naïve like and primed ESCs have stronger correlation than the correlation between either pXEN cells and porcine naïve like ESCs or primed ESCs. Porcine extra-embryonic endoderm cells have a distinct identity, clustering neither with porcine naïve like ESCs nor with primed ESCs. We confirmed that porcine extra-embryonic endoderm cells lack the expression of key pluripotency genes, such as Sox2, Pou5f1 and Klf4, but they expressed other pluripotency genes, such as Sall4, Lin28a and Klf5. Furthermore, porcine extra-embryonic endoderm cells robustly express Gata4, Gata6 and Sox17 as well as genes encoding ExEn-associated cell surface proteins or basement membrane components Pdgfra, Col4a2, Lama1, Lamb1, Sparc, Ihh, Hnf4a and Dab2, which is in contrast to porcine naïve like ESCs that express these genes at a low level or lack expression altogether mRNA profiles of 3 porcine extra-embryonic endoderm cell lines, 2 naïve like embryonic stem cell lines and 2 primed embryonic stem cell lines in porcine.