Tetraploid Embryonic Stem Cells Maintain Pluripotency and Differentiation Potency into Three Germ Layers

PLoS One. 2015 Jun 19;10(6):e0130585. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0130585. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Polyploid amphibians and fishes occur naturally in nature, while polyploid mammals do not. For example, tetraploid mouse embryos normally develop into blastocysts, but exhibit abnormalities and die soon after implantation. Thus, polyploidization is thought to be harmful during early mammalian development. However, the mechanisms through which polyploidization disrupts development are still poorly understood. In this study, we aimed to elucidate how genome duplication affects early mammalian development. To this end, we established tetraploid embryonic stem cells (TESCs) produced from the inner cell masses of tetraploid blastocysts using electrofusion of two-cell embryos in mice and studied the developmental potential of TESCs. We demonstrated that TESCs possessed essential pluripotency and differentiation potency to form teratomas, which differentiated into the three germ layers, including diploid embryonic stem cells. TESCs also contributed to the inner cell masses in aggregated chimeric blastocysts, despite the observation that tetraploid embryos fail in normal development soon after implantation in mice. In TESCs, stability after several passages, colony morphology, and alkaline phosphatase activity were similar to those of diploid ESCs. TESCs also exhibited sufficient expression and localization of pluripotent markers and retained the normal epigenetic status of relevant reprogramming factors. TESCs proliferated at a slower rate than ESCs, indicating that the difference in genomic dosage was responsible for the different growth rates. Thus, our findings suggested that mouse ESCs maintained intrinsic pluripotency and differentiation potential despite tetraploidization, providing insights into our understanding of developmental elimination in polyploid mammals.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Blastocyst / cytology
  • Cell Differentiation
  • Cell Proliferation
  • DNA Methylation
  • Embryo, Mammalian / metabolism
  • Embryonic Stem Cells / cytology*
  • Embryonic Stem Cells / metabolism
  • Embryonic Stem Cells / transplantation
  • Female
  • Genes, Reporter
  • Germ Layers / metabolism*
  • Mice
  • Tetraploidy
  • Transcription Factors / metabolism

Substances

  • Transcription Factors

Grants and funding

This study was supported in part by Grants-in-aid for Scientific Research (Grant-in-Aid for challenging Exploratory Research) (24658237) from JSPS to KK, a Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (A) (26712025) from JSPS to WF, Grants-in-aid for Scientific Research (B) (25292187) from JSPS to KN, Grants-in-aid for Scientific Research (B) (24380159) from JSPS to YK, and Grants-in-Aid from the Foundation for Growth Science for KK.