GATA3 Mediates a Fast, Irreversible Commitment to BMP4-Driven Differentiation in Human Embryonic Stem Cells

During early development, extrinsic triggers prompt pluripotent cells to begin the process of differentiation. When and how human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) irreversibly commit to differentiation is a fundamental yet unanswered question. By combining single-cell imaging, genomic approaches, and mathematical modeling, we find that hESCs commit to exiting pluripotency unexpectedly early. We show that bone morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP4), an important differentiation trigger, induces a subset of early genes to mirror the sustained, bistable dynamics of upstream signaling. Induction of one of these genes, GATA3, drives differentiation in the absence of BMP4. Conversely, GATA3 knockout delays differentiation and prevents fast commitment to differentiation. We show that positive feedback at the level of the GATA3-BMP4 axis induces fast, irreversible commitment to differentiation. We propose that early commitment may be a feature of BMP-driven fate choices and that interlinked feedback is the molecular basis for an irreversible transition from pluripotency to differentiation.

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Irreversible commitment to BMP4-driven hESC differentiation is fast

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SMAD activation is sustained, bistable, and irreversible due to positive feedback

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GATA3 mirrors SMAD dynamics and mediates fast commitment to differentiation

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GATA3 is an early commitment gene

Positive Feedback Keeps Duration of Mitosis Temporally Insulated from Upstream Cell-Cycle Events

Cell division is characterized by a sequence of events by which a cell gives rise to two daughter cells. Quantitative measurements of cell-cycle dynamics in single cells showed that despite variability in G1-, S-, and G2 phases, duration of mitosis is short and remarkably constant. Surprisingly, there is no correlation between cell-cycle length and mitotic duration, suggesting that mitosis is temporally insulated from variability in earlier cell-cycle phases. By combining live cell imaging and computational modeling, we showed that positive feedback is the molecular mechanism underlying the temporal insulation of mitosis. Perturbing positive feedback gave rise to a sluggish, variable entry and progression through mitosis and uncoupled duration of mitosis from variability in cell cycle length. We show that positive feedback is important to keep mitosis short, constant, and temporally insulated and anticipate it might be a commonly used regulatory strategy to create modularity in other biological systems.