KLF17 acts as a dual reporter for tracking naive pluripotency and 8-cell-like states

Endogenous KLF17 EGFP knock-in in human pluripotent stem cells enables a single continuous readout of position from primed through naive to 8-cell-like states.

• Why it matters: Monitoring successive early human developmental states in the same hPSC line is difficult with conventional markers, especially for rare 8-cell-like cells linked to zygotic genome activation.
• What they did: The authors generated an EGFP knock-in at the endogenous KLF17 locus and tested whether KLF17 expression level resolves primed-to-naive and naive-to-8C-like transitions using naive conversion and TSA/DZNep treatment.
• The result: KLF17-positive cells showed elevated naive-associated genes (including SUSD2, DNMT3L, DPPA3, DPPA5, TFCP2L1, CD75) and formed blastoids at higher efficiency, while higher KLF17 levels progressively increased ZGA-associated transcripts (ZSCAN4, LEUTX, TPRX1, MBD3L2, DUXA, RFPL2) across sorted fractions.