Human cell type diversity emerges through a highly regulated series of fate restrictions from pluripotent progenitors. Fate restriction is orchestrated in part through epigenetic modifications at genes and regulatory elements, however it has been difficult to study these mechanisms in humans. Here, we use organoid models of the human central nervous system and establish single-cell profiling of histone modifications (H3K27ac, H3K27me3, H3K4me3) in organoid cells over a time course to reconstruct epigenomic trajectories governing cell identity acquisition from human pluripotency. We capture transitions from pluripotency through neuroepithelium, to retinal and brain region specification, as well as differentiation from progenitors to neuronal and glial terminal states. We find that switching of repressive and activating epigenetic modifications can precede and predict decisions at each stage, providing a temporal census of gene regulatory elements and transcription factors that we characterize in a gene regulatory network underlying human cerebral fate acquisition. We use transcriptome and chromatin accessibility measurements in the same cell from a human developing brain to validate this regulatory mode in a primary tissue. We show that abolishing histone 3 lysine 27 trimethylation (H3K27me3) through inhibition of the polycomb group protein Embryonic Ectoderm Development (EED) at the neuroectoderm stage disrupts fate restriction and leads to aberrant cell fate acquisition, ultimately influencing cell type composition in brain organoids. Altogether, our single-cell genome wide map of histone modifications during human neural organoid development serves as a blueprint ( https://episcape.ethz.ch ) to explore human cell fate decisions in normal physiology and in neurodevelopmental disorders. More broadly, this approach can be used to study human epigenomic trajectory mechanisms in any human organoid system.

Summary

Unguided neural organoids reveal widespread and dynamic switching of epigenetic modifications during development and recapitulate fate restriction from pluripotency to terminally differentiated cells of the human central nervous system.