Bioenergetic Profiling of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells.

Cellular metabolism contributes to cell fate decisions. Bioenergetic profiling can therefore provide considerable insights into cellular identity and specification. Given the current importance of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) for biomedical applications, assessing the bioenergetic properties of hPSCs and derivatives can unveil relevant mechanisms in the context of development biology and molecular disease modeling. Here, we describe a method to facilitate bioenergetic profiling of hPSCs in a reproducible and scalable manner. After simultaneous assessment of mitochondrial respiration and glycolytic capacity using Seahorse XFe96 Analyzer, we measure lactate concentration in the cellular media. Finally, we normalize the values based on DNA amount. We describe the procedures with specific requirements related to hPSCs . However, the same protocol can be easily adapted to other cell types, including differentiated progenies from hPSCs .