To facilitate the study of comparative genomics in primates, Romero et al. generated a panel of seven induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines derived from chimpanzees. RNA sequencing and DNA methylation analysis of chimp and human iPSCs and their respective source lines revealed reduced intra-species variation in iPSCs compared with somatic cells, suggesting that differences between individuals were erased during reprogramming. Loss of intra-species variability facilitated the detection of differences between species, as the authors identified more differentially expressed genes and differentially methylated regions between chimpanzee and human iPSCs than other studies using different tissues.
References
Romero, I. G. et al. A panel of induced pluripotent stem cells from chimpanzees: a resource for comparative functional genomics. eLife http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.07103 (2015)
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Waldron, D. Chimpanzee induced pluripotent stem cells. Nat Rev Genet 16, 439 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg3988
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg3988