Generation of embryo chimeras with pluripotent stem cells in rabbit
Résumé
Mouse pluripotent stem-cells (PSCs) self-renew into the naïve state of pluripotency. After injection into a host mouse blastocyst, they are able to form a chimera by colonizing the host preimplantation embryo (Nagy et al., 1993). Moreover, mouse PSCs are able to form interspecies chimeras after injection into a rabbit host blastocyst (Aksoy et al., 2021). Consequently, these PSCs are the gold standard of the chimerism.
Conversely, rabbit PSCs self-renew into the primed state of pluripotency. They have low colonization capacity of preimplantation embryo after injection into a host blastocyst (Osteil et al., 2016).
We are investigating how rabbit PSCs can become able to generate chimeras and which mechanism are involved in this process.