Gene expression profiling of neural crest progenitor cultures derived from human embryonic stem cells carrying nonsense mutations in the Polycomb gene ASXL1 [HET]

We observed impaired neural crest cell differentiation from human embryonic stem cells that harbor nonsense mutations in the Polycomb gene ASXL1. To investigate the underlying molecular mechanisms, we harvested neural crest differentiation cultures from wildtype and heterozygous ASXL1 mutant lines at day 7 of a neural crest differentiation protocol and performed total RNA sequencing using the Illumina HiSeq2500 system. Analyses of global transcriptomes revealed profound changes between wildtype and mutant cultures, and we identified downregulation of the neural crest transcription factor ZIC1.