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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 11, 2025

Protocol for Human Blastoids Modeling Blastocyst Development and Implantation

Protocol for Human Blastoids Modeling Blastocyst Development and Implantation

Published on: August 10, 2022

mTOR activity paces human blastocyst stage developmental progression.

Dhanur P Iyer¹, Heidar Heidari Khoei², Vera A van der Weijden³

¹Stem Cell Chromatin Group, Department of Genome Regulation, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, 14195 Berlin, Germany; Institute of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany.

|September 27, 2024

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Human cells can enter a dormant state, similar to other mammals, by regulating the mTOR pathway. This discovery in human pluripotent stem cells and blastoids has implications for reproductive therapies.

Keywords:

blastoid development diapause dormancy human mTOR pluripotent stem cells

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Area of Science:

Reproductive biology
Developmental biology
Stem cell research

Background:

Mammalian embryos can pause development (embryonic diapause) to synchronize conception with optimal conditions for parturition.
In mice, embryonic diapause is regulated by the mTOR signaling pathway, but its conservation in humans is unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) and blastoids can enter a dormant state analogous to embryonic diapause.
To determine the role of the mTOR signaling pathway in regulating this dormant state in human cells.

Main Methods:

hPSCs and blastoids were treated to decrease mTOR signaling pathway activity.
Cellular proliferation, developmental progression, and attachment capacity to endometrial cells were assessed.
Reversibility of the dormant state was evaluated at functional and molecular levels.

Main Results:

Decreased mTOR signaling induced hPSCs and blastoids to enter a dormant state.
This dormancy was characterized by limited proliferation, developmental progression, and endometrial cell attachment.
The dormant state was found to be reversible at both functional and molecular levels.

Conclusions:

Human cells, like those of other mammals, possess the ability to enter a reversible dormant state around the blastocyst stage.
Regulation of the mTOR signaling pathway is key to inducing and potentially reversing this dormancy in human cells.
This finding has significant potential implications for advancing human reproductive therapies.