Previous work from our laboratory using human NTERA-2 cells (pluripotent human testicular embryonal carcinoma cell line; ATCC: CRL-1973) revealed that AhR supports cell differentiation through the transcriptional repression of retrotransposable Alu elements located in the promoter region of pluripotency genes OCT4 and NANOG (Morales-Hernandez et al., 2016). Here, POU5F1 is linked to embryonal carcinoma.