UCSF

Developmental signaling molecules are used for cell fate determination, and understanding how their combinatorial effects produce the variety of cell types in multicellular organisms is a key problem in biology. Here, we demonstrate that the combination of leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF), bone morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP4), lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), and ascorbic acid (AA) efficiently converts mouse primed pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) into naive PSCs. Signaling by the lipid LPA through its receptor LPAR1 and downstream effector Rho-associated protein kinase (ROCK) cooperated with LIF signaling to promote this conversion. BMP4, which also stimulates conversion to naive pluripotency, bypassed the need for exogenous LPA by increasing the activity of the extracellular LPA-producing enzyme autotaxin (ATX). We found that LIF and LPA-LPAR1 signaling affect the abundance of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3), which induces a previously unappreciated Kruppel-like factor (KLF)2-KLF4-PR domain 14 (PRDM14) transcription factor circuit key to establish naive pluripotency. AA also affects this transcription factor circuit by controlling PRDM14 expression. Thus, our study reveals that ATX-mediated autocrine lipid signaling promotes naive pluripotency by intersecting with LIF and BMP4 signaling.