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Restricted ethnic diversity in human embryonic stem cell lines

Nature Methods volume 7, pages 6–7 (2010)Cite this article

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Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) have the capacity to self-renew indefinitely and to differentiate into a wide array of cell types, which make them a potential source of essentially unlimited quantities of differentiated cells for basic and clinical research. The tremendous self-renewal of hPSCs might lead one to conclude that a small number of cell lines would be sufficient to meet all needs. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the genetic background of human cell lines can have significant effects on experimental results.

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Figure 1: hESC and hiPSC ethnic origins and sites of derivation.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank A. Robins (Novocell, Inc.), J.-C. Izpisua Belmonte (The Salk Institute and Center of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona), P. Schwartz (Children's Hospital Orange County), N.O. Schmidt (Universitatsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf), J. Chun (The Scripps Research Institute), D. Chen (Univ. California, Irvine), J. Shen (ScienCell Research Laboratories, Inc.) and the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Brain and Tissue Bank for Developmental Disorders for their generous contributions of samples for this study. We also thank H. Tran (The Scripps Research Institute), G. Zhou (CSIRO Molecular and Health Technologies) and H. Chy (CSIRO Molecular and Health Technologies) for their contributions to the project. L.C.L. is supported by an NICHD WRHR K12 award and California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) RN2-00931-1. This project was supported by CIRM RT1-01108-1.

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Author notes

  1. Louise C Laurent and Caroline M Nievergelt: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Reproductive Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA

    Louise C Laurent

  2. Department of Chemical Physiology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, USA

    Louise C Laurent, Candace Lynch, Eyitayo Fakunle & Jeanne F Loring

  3. Center for Regenerative Medicine, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, USA

    Louise C Laurent, Candace Lynch & Eyitayo Fakunle

  4. Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA

    Caroline M Nievergelt & Andrew Schork

  5. Reeve-Irvine Research Center, Sue and Bill Gross Research Center, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, USA

    Julie V Harness & Hans S Keirstead

  6. Stem Cell Laboratory, Sydney IVF, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Uli Schmidt

  7. Department of Pathology, Children's Memorial Research Center, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Vasiliy Galat

  8. iPS and Human Stem Cell Core Facility, Children's Memorial Research Center, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Vasiliy Galat

  9. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Molecular and Health Technologies, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

    Andrew L Laslett

  10. Australian Stem Cell Centre, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

    Andrew L Laslett

  11. Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

    Andrew L Laslett

  12. Department of Molecular Neurology, Biomedicum Stem Cell Center, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Timo Otonkoski

  13. Children's Hospital, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Timo Otonkoski

  14. Modern Cell and Tissue Technologies Core, Inc., Seoul, Korea

    Hyun-Sook Park

Authors
  1. Louise C Laurent
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  2. Caroline M Nievergelt
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Supplementary information

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Supplementary Figure 1, Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Methods (PDF 854 kb)

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Laurent, L., Nievergelt, C., Lynch, C. et al. Restricted ethnic diversity in human embryonic stem cell lines. Nat Methods 7, 6–7 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth0110-06

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