Retinoic Acid Induces Embryonic Stem Cells (ESCs) Transition to 2 Cell-Like State Through a Coordinated Expression of and .

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are derived from inner cell mass (ICM) of the blastocyst. In serum/LIF culture condition, they show variable expression of pluripotency genes that mark cell fluctuation between pluripotency and differentiation metastate. The ESCs subpopulation marked by zygotic genome activation gene (ZGA) signature, including , retains a wider differentiation potency than epiblast-derived ESCs. We have recently shown that retinoic acid (RA) significantly enhances Zscan4 cell population. However, it remains unexplored how RA initiates the ESCs to 2-cell like reprogramming. Here we found that RA is decisive for ESCs to 2C-like cell transition, and reconstructed the gene network surrounding . We revealed that RA regulates 2C-like population co-activating and . We provided novel evidence that RA dependent ESCs to 2C-like cell transition is regulated by , and antagonized by . Our suggested mechanism could shed light on the role of RA on ESC reprogramming.