Project description:Here we extend our previous EMLO gastruloid technology to cardiac (EMLOC) with the generation of interconnected neuro-gut-cardiac interconnected multilineages. The contractile EMLOCs recapitulate numerous developmental features of heart tube formation and specialization, cardiomyocyte differentiation and remodeling phases, epicardium, ventricular wall morphogenesis, and formation of the putative outflow tract. Cardiogenesis in EMLOCs originates anterior to the gut tube primordium and we observe neurons that progressively populate the cardiogenic region in a pattern that mirrors the spatial distribution of neurons in heart innervation. The EMLOC mode represents the first multi-lineage advancement of neuro-cardiac lineages in a gastruloid model that parallels human cardiogenesis with neurogenesis.
Project description:Multi-lineage development from gastruloids is enabling unprecedented opportunities to model and study human embryonic processes and is expected to accelerate ex vivo strategies in organ development. Reproducing human cardiogenesis with neurogenesis in a multi-lineage context remains challenging, requiring spatiotemporal input of paracrine and mechanical cues. Here we extend elongating multi-lineage organized (EMLO) gastruloids to include cardiogenesis (EMLOC) and describe interconnected neuro-cardiac lineages in a single gastruloid model. Contractile EMLOCs recapitulate numerous interlinked developmental features including heart tube formation and specialization, cardiomyocyte differentiation and remodeling phases, epicardium, ventricular wall morphogenesis, chamber-like structures and formation of a putative outflow tract. The EMLOC cardiac region, which originates anterior to gut tube primordium, is progressively populated by neurons in a spatial pattern mirroring the known distribution of neurons in the innervated human heart. This human EMLOC model represents a multi-lineage advancement for the study of coincident neurogenesis and cardiogenesis.
Project description:Gastruloids are highly scalable, three-dimensional assemblies generated from pluripotent stem cells that recapitulate fundamental principles of embryonic pattern formation in vitro. Using single cell RNA and multiome sequencing we provide a comprehensive resource mapping cellular states and cell types found during gastruloid development and compare them to the in vivo embryo. We further develop a high throughput gastruloid handling and imaging pipeline to spatially monitor cell type emergence and unfolding of symmetry breaking during gastruloid development. We report spatial variability of pluripotency states in early gastruloids that determines a binary cell response to Wnt activation. While cells situated in the core of the gastruloid revert to an ectopic pluripotent state, peripheral cells differentiate to a primitive streak like state. These two populations then cause gastruloids to break radial symmetry, allowing axial elongation and commitment to the three embryonic germ layers. Finally by performing a phenotypic compound screen, we perturb thousands of gastruloids at relevant developmental time points deriving a phenotypic landscape and inferring molecular regulator networks underlying gastruloid development. Employing this resource, we improve the formation of anterior structures in the existing gastruloid model, using a dual Wnt modulation approach to differentiate an anterior ectopic pluripotent core to anterior ecto- and endodermal structures. This work gives is a resource to understand how gastruloids develop and, more generally, how homogenous cell populations can generate complex patterns in vitro.
Project description:Time-course analysis of cell type specification in a 3-dimensional gastruloid differentiation system initiated from mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells and biased towards hemato-endothelial cell production.
Project description:We use single cell RNA sequencing to describe the transcriptional changes during gastruloid development from 24 to 84 hours with 12 hours intervals.
Project description:Gata factors are amongst the genes expressed early on in the process of cardiogenesis. We used microarrays to examine the immediate early targets of Gata4 and Gata5 in the Xenopus leavis animal cap cardiogenesis model. We hope to use these data to examine the roles of Gata4 and Gata5 in cardiogenesis and also to begin to dissect out the common and distinct targets of Gata4 and Gata5. Experiment Overall Design: Xenopus leavis embryos were injected at the one cell stage with dexamethasone-inducible Gata4 or Gata5 mRNA constructs (to examine endodermal and mesodermal targets) or with Gata4 in the presence of Dkk1 (to examine mesodermal targets.) Embryos were cultured to stage 9, whereupon animal caps were excised and cultured for 2.5 hours in media containing dexamethasone to induce the constructs and cycloheximide to block de novo protein synthesis and thus give only immediate early targets.