GSE172312
Depletion of demethylase KDM6 enhances early neuroectoderm commitment of human ESCs through inhibiting WNT activation
Epigenetic modifications play a crucial role in learning, memory and neurogenesis, but the study of its role in early neuroectoderm commitment from pluripotent inner cell mass is relatively lack. Here we utilized the system of directed neuroectoderm differentiation from human embryonic stem cells and identified KDM6B, an enzyme responsible to erase H3K27me3, was the most upregulated enzyme of histone methylation during neuroectoderm differentiation by transcriptome analysis. We then constructed KDM6B-null embryonic stem cells and found strikingly, the cells with KDM6B knockout exhibited much higher neuroectoderm induction efficiency. Furthermore, we constructed a serial of embryonic stem cell lines knocking out the other H3K27 demethylase KDM6A, and depleting both KDM6A and KDM6B, respectively. These cell lines together confirmed KDM6 impeded early neuroectoderm commitment. By RNA-seq, we found a panel of WNT activation genes significantly downregulated while WNT inhibiting genes significantly upregulated upon depletion of KDM6. Functional rescue assayed that WNT agonist could abolish the differential neuroectoderm induction due to manipulating KDM6 demonstrated WNT was the major downstream of KDM6 during early neural induction. Taken together, our findings illustrated the important role of histone methylation modifier KDM6A and KDM6B in neuroectoderm differentiation and provided additional insights into the precise epigenetic regulation in different stage of neurogenesis. Overall design: RNA-seq of KDM6 KO in neuroectoderm differentiation.