With defined culture protocol, human embryonic stem cells （hESCs） are able to generate cardiomyocytes in vitro, therefore providing a great model for human heart development, and holding great potential for car- dia...With defined culture protocol, human embryonic stem cells （hESCs） are able to generate cardiomyocytes in vitro, therefore providing a great model for human heart development, and holding great potential for car- diac disease therapies. In this study, we successfully generated a highly pure population of human cardio- myocytes （hCMs） （〉95% cTnT＋） from hESC line, which enabled us to identify and characterize an hCM-specific signature, at both the gene expression and DNA meth- ylation levels. Gene functional association network and gene-disease network analyses of these hCM-enriched genes provide new insights into the mechanisms of hCM transcriptional regulation, and stand as an informative and rich resource for investigating cardiac gene func- tions and disease mechanisms. Moreover, we show that cardiac-structural genes and cardiac-transcription fac- tors have distinct epigenetic mechanisms to regulate their gene expression, providing a better understandingof how the epigenetic machinery coordinates to regulate gene expression in different cell types.展开更多
文摘With defined culture protocol, human embryonic stem cells （hESCs） are able to generate cardiomyocytes in vitro, therefore providing a great model for human heart development, and holding great potential for car- diac disease therapies. In this study, we successfully generated a highly pure population of human cardio- myocytes （hCMs） （〉95% cTnT＋） from hESC line, which enabled us to identify and characterize an hCM-specific signature, at both the gene expression and DNA meth- ylation levels. Gene functional association network and gene-disease network analyses of these hCM-enriched genes provide new insights into the mechanisms of hCM transcriptional regulation, and stand as an informative and rich resource for investigating cardiac gene func- tions and disease mechanisms. Moreover, we show that cardiac-structural genes and cardiac-transcription fac- tors have distinct epigenetic mechanisms to regulate their gene expression, providing a better understandingof how the epigenetic machinery coordinates to regulate gene expression in different cell types.
