Nuclear export of circular RNA.

Circular RNAs (circRNAs), which are increasingly being implicated in a variety of functions in normal and cancerous cells, are formed by back-splicing of precursor mRNAs in the nucleus. circRNAs are predominantly localized in the cytoplasm, indicating that they must be exported from the nucleus. Here we identify a pathway that is specific for the nuclear export of circular RNA.

A bipartite function of ESRRB can integrate signaling over time to balance self-renewal and differentiation.

Cooperative DNA binding of transcription factors (TFs) integrates the cellular context to support cell specification during development. Naive mouse embryonic stem cells are derived from early development and can sustain their pluripotent identity indefinitely. Here, we ask whether TFs associated with pluripotency evolved to directly support this state or if the state emerges from their combinatorial action.

Enhancers are activated by p300/CBP activity-dependent PIC assembly, RNAPII recruitment, and pause release.

The metazoan-specific acetyltransferase p300/CBP is involved in activating signal-induced, enhancer-mediated transcription of cell-type-specific genes. However, the global kinetics and mechanisms of p300/CBP activity-dependent transcription activation remain poorly understood. We performed genome-wide, time-resolved analyses to show that enhancers and super-enhancers are dynamically activated through p300/CBP-catalyzed acetylation, deactivated by the opposing deacetylase activity, and kinetic acetylation directly contributes to maintaining cell identity at very rapid (minutes) timescales.

Dynamic lineage priming is driven via direct enhancer regulation by ERK.

Central to understanding cellular behaviour in multi-cellular organisms is the question of how a cell exits one transcriptional state to adopt and eventually become committed to another. Fibroblast growth factor-extracellular signal-regulated kinase (FGF -ERK) signalling drives differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells (ES cells) and pre-implantation embryos towards primitive endoderm, and inhibiting ERK supports ES cell self-renewal. Paracrine FGF-ERK signalling induces heterogeneity, whereby cells reversibly progress from pluripotency towards primitive endoderm while retaining their capacity to re-enter self-renewal.

An automated microfluidic device for time-lapse imaging of mouse embryonic stem cells.

Long-term, time-lapse imaging studies of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) require a controlled and stable culturing environment for high-resolution imaging. Microfluidics is well-suited for such studies, especially when the media composition needs to be rapidly and accurately altered without disrupting the imaging. Current studies in plates, which can only add molecules at the start of an experiment without any information on the levels of endogenous signaling before the exposure, are incompatible with continuous high-resolution imaging and cell-tracking.

Time-Resolved Analysis Reveals Rapid Dynamics and Broad Scope of the CBP/p300 Acetylome.

The acetyltransferases CBP and p300 are multifunctional transcriptional co-activators. Here, we combined quantitative proteomics with CBP/p300-specific catalytic inhibitors, bromodomain inhibitor, and gene knockout to reveal a comprehensive map of regulated acetylation sites and their dynamic turnover rates. CBP/p300 acetylates thousands of sites, including signature histone sites and a multitude of sites on signaling effectors and enhancer-associated transcriptional regulators.

Insulin fine-tunes self-renewal pathways governing naive pluripotency and extra-embryonic endoderm.

Signalling downstream of Activin/Nodal (ActA) and Wnt can induce endoderm differentiation and also support self-renewal in pluripotent cells. Here we find that these apparently contradictory activities are fine-tuned by insulin. In the absence of insulin, the combination of these cytokines supports endoderm in a context-dependent manner.

Surveillance for Secure Differentiation.

The precise place and time where embryonic differentiation begins is regulated by regionalized signaling. In this issue of Cell Stem Cell, Wang et al. (2017) investigate how converging Wnt and Nodal signals promote mesendoderm through a p53, Wnt3 feed-forward loop, pointing to a mechanism by which cells gauge time and fitness during differentiation.

Erk signaling suppresses embryonic stem cell self-renewal to specify endoderm.

Fgf signaling via Erk activation has been associated with both neural induction and the generation of a primed state for the differentiation of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) to all somatic lineages. To dissect the role of Erk in both ESC self-renewal and lineage specification, we explored the requirements for this pathway in various in vitro differentiation settings. A combination of pharmacological inhibition of Erk signaling and genetic loss of function reveal a role for Erk signaling in endodermal, but not neural differentiation.

ERK2 suppresses self-renewal capacity of embryonic stem cells, but is not required for multi-lineage commitment.

Activation of the FGF-ERK pathway is necessary for naïve mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells to exit self-renewal and commit to early differentiated lineages. Here we show that genetic ablation of Erk2, the predominant ERK isozyme expressed in ES cells, results in hyper-phosphorylation of ERK1, but an overall decrease in total ERK activity as judged by substrate phosphorylation and immediate-early gene (IEG) induction. Normal induction of this subset of canonical ERK targets, as well as p90RSK phosphorylation, was rescued by transgenic expression of either ERK1 or ERK2 indicating a degree of functional redundancy.