Cermola, FedericaD'Aniello, CristinaTatè, Rosaritade Cesare, DarioMartínez Arias, AlfonsoMinchiotti, GabriellaPatriarca, Eduardo Jorge2022-03-182022-03-182021Cermola F, Aniello D'A, Tatè R, Cesare D de, Martinez-Arias A, Minchiotti G et al. Gastruloid development competence discriminates different states of pluripotency. Stem Cell Reports. 2021 Feb 9;16(2):354-369. DOI: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2020.12.0132213-6711http://hdl.handle.net/10230/52719Floating spheroidal aggregates of mouse embryonic stem cells can develop into polarized/elongated organoids, namely gastruloids. We set up a high-performing assay to measure gastruloid formation efficiency (GFE), and found that GFE decreases as pluripotency progresses from naive (GFE ≥ 95%) to primed (GFE = 0) state. Specifically, we show that primed EpiSCs fail to generate proper cell aggregates, while early-primed EpiLCs aggregate but eventually fail to develop into elongated gastruloids. Moreover, we characterized proline-induced cells (PiCs), a LIF-dependent reversible early-primed state of pluripotency, and show that PiCs are able to generate gastruloids (GFE ∼ 50%) and are also competent to differentiate into primordial germ cell-like cells. Thus, we propose the GFE assay as a valuable functional tool to discriminate different states of the pluripotency continuum.application/pdfeng© 2020. Federica Cermola et al. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)EmbriologiaGenèticainfo:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.stemcr.2020.12.013info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess