Project description:The purpose of this study was to understand differences between maturation processes in endogenous and pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes. To this end, we first expanded our previous reference of endogenous cardiomyocyte maturation, isolated by LP-FACS (see Kannan et al., bioRxiv 2020, and GSE147807). We subsequently generated PSCs from the same background strain and differentiated to CMs. CMs were isolated by conventional FACs.
Project description:To date, there have been limited high quality libraries of cardiomyocyte maturation during the perinatal period, in part owing to the difficulty of isolating large perinatal cardiomyocytes. We previously developed a method utilizing large-particle fluorescent activated cell sorting (LP-FACS) to isolate adult cardiomyocytes for single cell RNA-seq (Kannan et al., Circ Res, 2019). We utilize this method to generate a reference of perinatal cardiomyocyte maturation.
Project description:Mammalian cardiomyocytes rapidly mature after birth, with hallmarks such as cell-cycle exit, binucleation, and metabolic switch to oxidative phosphorylation of lipids. The causes and transcriptional programs regulating cardiomyocyte maturation are not fully understood yet. Thus, we performed single cell RNA-seq of neonatal and postnatal day 7 rat hearts to identify the key factors for this process and found AP-1 as a key factor to regulate cardiomyocyte maturation. To find the mechanism of AP-1 during cardiomyocyte maturation, we performed RNA-seq analysis of neonatal rat ventricular cardiomyocytes and found Ap-1 promote cardiomyocyte maturation by regulating cardiomyocyte metabolism.
Project description:Decades of progress in developmental cardiology has advanced our understanding of the early aspects of heart development, including cardiomyocyte (CM) differentiation. However, control of CM maturation which is subsequently required to generate adult myocytes, remains elusive. Here, we analyzed over 200 microarray datasets from early embryonic to adult hearts and identified a large number of genes whose expression shifts gradually and continuously during maturation. We generated an atlas of integrated gene expression, biological pathways, transcriptional regulators, and gene regulatory networks (GRNs), which show discrete sets of key transcriptional regulators and pathways activated or suppressed during CM maturation. We developed a GRN-based program named MatStatCM that indexes CM maturation status. MatStatCM reveals that pluripotent stem cell-derived CMs mature early in culture, but are arrested at the late embryonic stage with aberrant regulation of key transcription factors. Our study provides a foundation for understanding CM maturation.
Project description:The mammalian heart undergoes maturation during postnatal life to meet the increased functional requirements of the adult. However, the key drivers of this process remain poorly defined. We developed as 96-well screening platform, using human pluripotent stem cell derived cardiac organoids, to determine the molecular requirements for in vitro cardiomyocyte maturation. Here, we describe gene expression changes resulting from culturing human cardiac organoids in standard cell culture conditions and under optimized maturation conditions. We assessed our maturation conditions by comparing transcriptional changes of human cardiac organoids to RNA isolated from human heart. Interesting, analysis of these data revealed that a switch to fatty acid oxidative metabolism is a key governor of cardiomyocyte maturation and mature cardiac organoids were refractory to mitogenic stimuli.
Project description:Cardiomyocyte maturation is the final stage of heart development, and abnormal cardiomyocyte maturation will lead to serious heart diseases. CXXC zinc finger protein 1 (Cfp1) is an important epigenetic factor, which plays an essential role in the development and maturation of multi-lineage cells, while its effect on the maturation of cardiomyocyte remains unclear. This study was performed to explore the potential role of Cfp1 in cardiomyocyte maturation of heart and the underlying mechanisms. Cardiomyocyte-specific Cfp1 knockout (Cfp1-cKO) mice died within 4 weeks of birth. Cardiomyocytes from Cfp1-cKO mice showed an inhibited maturation phenotype in structure, metabolism, contractile function, and cell cycle, accompanied by down-regulation of adult genes and up-regulation of fetal genes. In contrast, cardiomyocyte-specific Cfp1 transgenic (Cfp1-TG) mice and human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) overexpressing Cfp1 showed a more mature phenotype. Mechanistically, deficiency of Cfp1 results in reduced trimethylation on lysine 4 of histone H3 (H3K4me3) modification and formation of ectopic H3K4me3. Moreover, Cfp1 deletion decreased the level of H3K4me3 modification in adult genes and increased the level of H3K4me3 modification in fetal genes. Collectively, Cfp1 modulates the expression of cardiomyocyte maturation related genes by modulating histone H3K4me3 modification, which in turn regulates cardiomyocyte maturation. This study implicates Cfp1 as an important molecule regulating cardiomyocyte maturation, and its dysfunction is strongly associated with cardiac disease.
Project description:Cardiomyocyte maturation is the final stage of heart development, and abnormal cardiomyocyte maturation will lead to serious heart diseases. CXXC zinc finger protein 1 (Cfp1) is an important epigenetic factor, which plays an essential role in the development and maturation of multi-lineage cells, while its effect on the maturation of cardiomyocyte remains unclear. This study was performed to explore the potential role of Cfp1 in cardiomyocyte maturation of heart and the underlying mechanisms. Cardiomyocyte-specific Cfp1 knockout (Cfp1-cKO) mice died within 4 weeks of birth. Cardiomyocytes from Cfp1-cKO mice showed an inhibited maturation phenotype in structure, metabolism, contractile function, and cell cycle, accompanied by down-regulation of adult genes and up-regulation of fetal genes. In contrast, cardiomyocyte-specific Cfp1 transgenic (Cfp1-TG) mice and human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) overexpressing Cfp1 showed a more mature phenotype. Mechanistically, deficiency of Cfp1 results in reduced trimethylation on lysine 4 of histone H3 (H3K4me3) modification and formation of ectopic H3K4me3. Moreover, Cfp1 deletion decreased the level of H3K4me3 modification in adult genes and increased the level of H3K4me3 modification in fetal genes. Collectively, Cfp1 modulates the expression of cardiomyocyte maturation related genes by modulating histone H3K4me3 modification, which in turn regulates cardiomyocyte maturation. This study implicates Cfp1 as an important molecule regulating cardiomyocyte maturation, and its dysfunction is strongly associated with cardiac disease.