Transcriptome profiling of pluripotent pig embryonic stem cells originating from uni- and biparental embryos

Pig pluripotent stem cells have tremendous potential because the pig is a valuable animal as both an agricultural resource and as a preclinical model of human therapy. To date, a lack of understanding of pig pluripotency has inhibited the derivation of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and transgene-free induced pluripotent stem cells. Therefore, there has been no accessible or reliable transcriptome data for researching the genuine pig pluripotency network. Our previous study isolated authentic pig ESCs, which had teratoma-forming and direct differentiation ability, that were derived by activating the FGF2, ACTIVIN A, and WNT pathways. Here, we aimed to provide detailed information on transcriptome data of the newly derived pig ESCs and perform a comparative analysis with pig preimplantation embryo transcriptomes in a public database.

The transcriptome data of ESCs derived from in vitro fertilized and parthenogenetic embryos were generated by HiSeq 2500. Then, differentially expressed genes (DEGs) from each sample were compared with fibroblasts, and gene expression profiling was carried out for comparative analysis. Our data, as the first transcriptome dataset for genuine pig pluripotent cells, could be a general reference for explaining the molecular mechanism of species-specific pluripotency and improving understanding of the embryo development of domestic animals.