Inheritance of OCT 4 predetermines fate choice in human embryonic stem cells

It is well known that clonal cells can make different fate decisions, but it is unclear whether these decisions are determined during, or before, a cell's own lifetime. Here, we engineered an endogenous fluorescent reporter for the pluripotency factor OCT 4 to study the timing of differentiation decisions in human embryonic stem cells. By tracking single‐cell OCT 4 levels over multiple cell cycle generations, we found that the decision to differentiate is largely determined before the differentiation stimulus is presented and can be predicted by a cell's preexisting OCT 4 signaling patterns. We further quantified how maternal OCT 4 levels were transmitted to, and distributed between, daughter cells. As mother cells underwent division, newly established OCT 4 levels in daughter cells rapidly became more predictive of final OCT 4 expression status. These results imply that the choice between developmental cell fates can be largely predetermined at the time of cell birth through inheritance of a pluripotency factor.