A Genome-Wide CRISPR Screen Identifies Factors Regulating Pluripotency Exit in Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells

Pluripotency maintenance and exit in embryonic stem cells is a focal topic in stem cell biology. However, the effects of screening under very stringent culture conditions (e.g., differentiation medium, no leukemia inhibitory factor, no chemical inhibitors such as PD0325901 and CHIR99021, and no feeder cells) and of prolonging culture for key factors that regulate pluripotency exit, have not yet been reported. Here, we used a genome-wide CRISPR library to perform such a screen in mouse embryonic stem cells. Naive NANOG-GFP mESCs were first transfected with a mouse genome-wide CRISPR knockout library to obtain a mutant mESCs library, followed by screening for two months in a strict N2B27 differentiation medium. The clones that survived our stringent screening were analyzed to identify the inserted sgRNAs. In addition to identifying the enriched genes that were reported in previous studies (Socs3, Tsc1, Trp53, Nf2, Tcf7l1, Csnk1a1, and Dhx30), we found 17 unreported genes, among which Zfp771 and Olfr769 appeared to be involved in pluripotency exit. Furthermore, Zfp771 knockout ESCs showed a differentiation delay in embryonic chimera experiments, indicating Zfp771 played an important role in pluripotency exit. Our results show that stringent screening with the CRISPR library can reveal key regulators of pluripotency exit.