Efficient Human Germ Cell Specification from Stem Cells via Combinatorial Expression of Transcription Factors

Abstract

The generation of germline cell types from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) represents a key milestone toward in vitro gametogenesis, which has the potential to transform reproductive modeling and medicine. Methods to recapitulate advanced germline cell specification in vitro have relied on extensive, long term culture methods, the most notable of which is a four-month culture protocol employing xenogeneic reconstituted ovaries with mouse embryonic ovarian somatic cells. Recently, transcription factor (TF)-based methods have demonstrated the feasibility of exogenous factor expression to directly differentiate hiPSCs into cell types of interest, including various ovarian cell types. The protocols leveraged in these studies, however, utilize more local methods of factor selection, such as basic differential gene expression analysis, and lower-throughput screening strategies via iterative testing of a small set of TFs. In this work, we integrate our recently-described graph theory pipeline and highly-parallelized screening protocols to globally identify and screen 46 oogenesis-regulating TFs for their role in human germline formation. We identify ZNF281, LHX8, SOHLH1, ZGLP1, and ANHX whose combinatorial overexpression drives DDX4+ induced oogonia-like cell (iOLC) formation from hiPSCs. In contrast to previous methods, our protocol employs a simple four-day, feeder-free monolayer culture condition. We additionally demonstrate a method of post-isolation, feeder-free expansion of DDX4+ iOLCs that shows retained cell identity in vitro. We additionally identify DLX5, HHEX, and FIGLA whose individual overexpression enhances hPGCLC formation from hiPSCs. We characterize these TF-based iOLCs and hPGCLCs via gene and protein expression analyses and demonstrate their broad similarity to in vivo and in vitro-derived oogonia and primordial germ cells. Together, these results identify new regulatory factors that enhance in vitro human germ cell specification and further establish unique computational and experimental tools for human in vitro oogenesis research.