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Sex-biased gene expression during neural differentiation of human embryonic stem cells
Stockholm University, Faculty of Science, Department of Molecular Biosciences, The Wenner-Gren Institute. Uppsala University, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-5973-1241
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Number of Authors: 52024 (English)In: Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, E-ISSN 2296-634X, Vol. 12, article id 1341373Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Sex differences in the developing human brain are primarily attributed to hormonal influence. Recently however, genetic differences and their impact on the developing nervous system have attracted increased attention. To understand genetically driven sexual dimorphisms in neurodevelopment, we investigated genome-wide gene expression in an in vitro differentiation model of male and female human embryonic stem cell lines (hESC), independent of the effects of human sex hormones. Four male and four female-derived hESC lines were differentiated into a population of mixed neurons over 37 days. Differential gene expression and gene set enrichment analyses were conducted on bulk RNA sequencing data. While similar differentiation tendencies in all cell lines demonstrated the robustness and reproducibility of our differentiation protocol, we found sex-biased gene expression already in undifferentiated ESCs at day 0, but most profoundly after 37 days of differentiation. Male and female cell lines exhibited sex-biased expression of genes involved in neurodevelopment, suggesting that sex influences the differentiation trajectory. Interestingly, the highest contribution to sex differences was found to arise from the male transcriptome, involving both Y chromosome and autosomal genes. We propose 13 sex-biased candidate genes (10 upregulated in male cell lines and 3 in female lines) that are likely to affect neuronal development. Additionally, we confirmed gene dosage compensation of X/Y homologs escaping X chromosome inactivation through their Y homologs and identified a significant overexpression of the Y-linked demethylase UTY and KDM5D in male hESC during neuron development, confirming previous results in neural stem cells. Our results suggest that genetic sex differences affect neuronal differentiation trajectories, which could ultimately contribute to sex biases during human brain development.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2024. Vol. 12, article id 1341373
Keywords [en]
genetic sex differences, human embryonic stem cells, neural differentiation, KDM5D, UTY, X and Y chromosome, gametologs, transcriptomics
National Category
Developmental Biology
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URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-232397DOI: 10.3389/fcell.2024.1341373ISI: 001222167100001PubMedID: 38764741Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85193053658OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-232397DiVA, id: diva2:1889846
Available from: 2024-08-16 Created: 2024-08-16 Last updated: 2024-08-16Bibliographically approved

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Peuckert, Christiane

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