GSE204800
Recapitulating early human development with 8C-like cells [ATAC-seq]
In human embryos, major zygotic genome activation (ZGA) initiates at the eight-cell (8C) stage. Abnormal ZGA leads to developmental defects and even contributes to the failure of human blastocyst formation or implantation. However, little is known about the mechanisms regulating human ZGA, because of many challenges and constraints on research on human embryos. Here we report one type of rare 8C-like cells (8CLCs) that are discovered specifically from human preimplantation epiblast-like stem cells (prEpiSCs) and naïve embryonic stem cells. 8CLCs express a list of human ZGA genes and their transcriptome closely resemble that of the human 8C embryo. An 8C-specific reporter is further developed to isolate 8CLCs from prEpiSCs and optimize the chemical-based culture condition that increases and maintains the 8CLC population. Functionally, 8CLCs can spontaneously form blastocyst-like structures. The discovery and maintenance of 8CLCs provides an opportunity to model human ZGA and recapitulate early human development. Overall design: We investigated chromatin state on the genome of  prEpiSCs using ATAC-seq.