Male ; Humans ; Prostatic Neoplasms ; Cell Differentiation ; Cell Lineage ; Cell Plasticity

Human pluripotent stem cells provide an inexhaustible model to study human embryogenesis in vitro. Recent studies have provided diverse models to generate human blastoids by self-organization of different pluripotent stem cells or somatic reprogramming intermediates. However, whether blastoids can be generated from other cell types or whether they can recapitulate postimplantation development in vitro is unknown. Here, we develop a strategy to generate human blastoids from heterogeneous intermediates with epiblast, trophectoderm, and primitive endoderm signatures of the primed-to-naïve conversion process, which resemble natural blastocysts in morphological architecture, composition of cell lineages, transcriptome, and lineage differentiation potential. In addition, these blastoids reflect many features of human peri-implantation and pregastrulation development when further cultured in an in vitro 3D culture system. In summary, our study provides an alternative strategy to generate human blastoids and offers insights into human early embryogenesis by modeling peri- and postimplantation development in vitro.
Humans ; Pluripotent Stem Cells/metabolism* ; Embryo, Mammalian/metabolism* ; Cell Differentiation ; Blastocyst ; Cell Lineage ; Embryonic Development

Animals ; Cell Differentiation ; Cell Lineage ; Dendritic Cells ; Mice

Central to the core principle of cell theory, depicting cells' history, state and fate is a fundamental goal in modern biology. By leveraging clonal analysis and single-cell RNA-seq technologies, single-cell lineage tracing provides new opportunities to interrogate both cell states and lineage histories. During the past few years, many strategies to achieve lineage tracing at single-cell resolution have been developed, and three of them (integration barcodes, polylox barcodes, and CRISPR barcodes) are noteworthy as they are amenable in experimentally tractable systems. Although the above strategies have been demonstrated in animal development and stem cell research, much care and effort are still required to implement these methods. Here we review the development of single-cell lineage tracing, major characteristics of the cell barcoding strategies, applications, as well as technical considerations and limitations, providing a guide to choose or improve the single-cell barcoding lineage tracing.
Animals ; Cell Lineage/genetics* ; Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats

Ambystoma mexicanum/immunology* ; Amputation ; Animals ; Biomarkers/metabolism* ; Blastomeres/immunology* ; Cell Lineage/immunology* ; Connective Tissue Cells/immunology* ; Epithelial Cells/immunology* ; Forelimb ; Gene Expression ; High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing ; Humans ; Immunity ; Peroxiredoxins/immunology* ; Regeneration/immunology* ; Regenerative Medicine/methods* ; Single-Cell Analysis/methods*

Abstract　　Hematopoietic stem cells are able to self-renewal and differentiate to all blood lineages. With the development of new technologies, recent studies have proposed the revised versions of hematopoiesis. In the classical model of hematopoietic differentiation, HSCs were located at the apex of hematopoietic hierarchy. During differentiation process, HSCs progressively lose self-renewal potential to be commited to progenitors with restricted differentiation potential. For instance, HSCs first give rise to multipotent progenitor cells, then produce bipotent and unipotent progenitors, and finally differentiate to mature blood cells. For the differentiation of megakaryocytes, common myeloid progenitors derived from HSCs give rise to megakaryocyte-erythrocyte progenitors and then develop to megakaryocytes. However, recent results show that megakaryocytes can be directly generated from HSCs without multipotent or bipotent phases. Alternatively, platelet-biased HSCs produce megakaryocyte progenitors. In this article, recent advances in the hematopoiesis and megakaryocyte differentiation pathway are reviewed.
Cell Differentiation ; Cell Lineage ; Hematopoiesis ; Hematopoietic Stem Cells ; Megakaryocytes ; Multipotent Stem Cells

Age-associated changes in immune cells have been linked to an increased risk for infection. However, a global and detailed characterization of the changes that human circulating immune cells undergo with age is lacking. Here, we combined scRNA-seq, mass cytometry and scATAC-seq to compare immune cell types in peripheral blood collected from young and old subjects and patients with COVID-19. We found that the immune cell landscape was reprogrammed with age and was characterized by T cell polarization from naive and memory cells to effector, cytotoxic, exhausted and regulatory cells, along with increased late natural killer cells, age-associated B cells, inflammatory monocytes and age-associated dendritic cells. In addition, the expression of genes, which were implicated in coronavirus susceptibility, was upregulated in a cell subtype-specific manner with age. Notably, COVID-19 promoted age-induced immune cell polarization and gene expression related to inflammation and cellular senescence. Therefore, these findings suggest that a dysregulated immune system and increased gene expression associated with SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility may at least partially account for COVID-19 vulnerability in the elderly.
Adult ; Aged ; Aged, 80 and over ; Aging ; genetics ; immunology ; Betacoronavirus ; CD4-Positive T-Lymphocytes ; metabolism ; Cell Lineage ; Chromatin Assembly and Disassembly ; Coronavirus Infections ; immunology ; Cytokine Release Syndrome ; etiology ; immunology ; Cytokines ; biosynthesis ; genetics ; Disease Susceptibility ; Flow Cytometry ; methods ; Gene Expression Profiling ; Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental ; Gene Rearrangement ; Humans ; Immune System ; cytology ; growth & development ; immunology ; Immunocompetence ; genetics ; Inflammation ; genetics ; immunology ; Mass Spectrometry ; methods ; Middle Aged ; Pandemics ; Pneumonia, Viral ; immunology ; Sequence Analysis, RNA ; Single-Cell Analysis ; Transcriptome ; Young Adult

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the effect of down-regulating the CD59 gene expression by RNAi lentivirus as vector on Jurkat cell line of acute T-lineage leukemia. METHODS: The expression of CD59 in Jurkat cell line of acute T-line leukemia was induced to decrease by RNAi lentivirus as vector. The transfection of RNA lentivirus and the localization of CD59 molecule were analyzed by laser confocal technique. The relative expression of CD59 gene in blank control, negative control and RNAi lentivirus transfected group was detected by real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR, and the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used to detect the expression of TNF-β and IL-3 in supernatants of cultured cells in 3 groups. The expression levels of apoptosis-related molecules including Caspase-3, Survivin, BCL-2 and BCL-2-associated X protein (BAX) were measured by Western blot. RESULTS: The transfection efficiency for Jurkat cells was higher than 90%. CD59 was mainly located on the cell membrane. Compared with the blank control group and the negative control group, the expression level of CD59 mRNA and protein in the RNAi lentivirus transfected group significantly decreased (P<0.05). Compared with the blank control group and the negative control group, the expression of TNF-β and IL-3 in the RNAi lentivirus transfected group were significantly higher and lower (P<0.05) respectively. The expression levels of Survivin and BCL-2 in the RNAi lentivirus transfected group were significantly lower than those in the blank control group and the negative control group, while the expression levels of Caspase-3 and BAX in the RNAi lentivirus transfected group were significantly higher than those in the blank control group and the negative control group (P< 0.05). CONCLUSION The down-regulation of CD59 gene expression induced by RNAi lenti-virus can decrease the expression of proliferation and differentiation-promoting molecule such as IL-3 and increase the expression of TNF-related factor in Jurkat cell line of acute T-lineage leukemia, which also can increase the expression of apoptosis-related proteins such as Caspase-3 and BAX, and decrease the expression of anti-apoptosis-related proteins such as Survivin and BCL-2.
Apoptosis ; CD59 Antigens ; Cell Lineage ; Cell Proliferation ; Down-Regulation ; Humans ; Jurkat Cells ; Lentivirus ; Leukemia ; RNA Interference ; RNA, Small Interfering ; Transfection

OBJECTIVE: To understand the differentiation of mesoderm-derived Flk1 cells on different locations of the early mouse embryonic development and to explore the potential of Flk1 cells to differentiate into mesenchymal lineage, like pericytes during vascular development. METHODS: Based on the Cre-LoxP system conditional knockout study strategy, the Flk1-Cre mice and ROSA26 reporter mice were used for lineage-tracing studies. The fate of the Flk1 progenitor cells was traced with the GFP population. The detection of mesoderm marker Flk1, hematopoietic cell-specific marker CD45, endothelial cell-specific markers CD31, CD144, and Emcn (endomucin), pericyte specific markers PDGFRβ and NG2, using the methods of immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, and flow cytometry should be combined to solve the concerned problems. RESULTS: Immunohistochemical staining of different fractions of E8.5-10.5 in the early embryogenesis of Flk1-Cre; ROSA26-EYFP mouse lineage showed that there were multiple populations in the Flk1 cell-derived GFP population surrounding hematopoietic sites, such as dorsal aortas, limb buds and yolk sac. In addition to hematopoietic cells, the CD31/Emcn typical endothelial cells distributed specifically along the blood vessel wall, there were many types of cell populations, such as mesenchymal-like cells. The immunofluorescence demonstrated that the cells of this group are neither hematopoietic, non-endothelial cells around the blood vessels, which are NG2+ pericytes. FACS analysis also confirmed that Flk1 cells contributed to pericytes. In addition, in different hematopoietic sites of the embryo, a small population of CD31+CD140B+ cell populations with a mesenchymal-like morphology was observed in the GFP population. CONCLUSION In the early stages of embryogenesis, mesoderm-derived Flk1 populations not only contribute to hematopoietic, endothelial, and muscle lineages, but also have a differentiation potential for mesenchymal lineage, like pericytes. The presumably observed CD31CD140B cell population may be a group of endothelial cells differentiated from Flk1 progenitor cells and undergoing an endothelium-to-mesenchymal transition, EndMT, gradually losing the endothelial surface-specific marker and also starting to express a pericyte surface-specific marker.
Animals ; Cell Differentiation ; Cell Lineage ; Mesoderm ; Mice ; Stem Cells ; Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Receptor-2 ; Yolk Sac

The autonomic nervous system controls various internal organs and executes crucial functions through sophisticated neural connectivity and circuits. Its dysfunction causes an imbalance of homeostasis and numerous human disorders. In the past decades, great efforts have been made to study the structure and functions of this system, but so far, our understanding of the classification of autonomic neuronal subpopulations remains limited and a precise map of their connectivity has not been achieved. One of the major challenges that hinder rapid progress in these areas is the complexity and heterogeneity of autonomic neurons. To facilitate the identification of neuronal subgroups in the autonomic nervous system, here we review the well-established and cutting-edge technologies that are frequently used in peripheral neuronal tracing and profiling, and discuss their operating mechanisms, advantages, and targeted applications.
Animals ; Autonomic Nervous System ; physiology ; Cell Differentiation ; physiology ; Cell Lineage ; physiology ; Homeostasis ; physiology ; Humans ; Nervous System ; growth & development ; Neurons ; physiology