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Isolation and characterization of hESC-derived heart field-specific cardiomyocytes unravels new insights into their transcriptional and electrophysiological profiles.

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AIMS We prospectively isolate and characterize first and second heart field- and nodal-like cardiomyocytes using a double reporter line from human embryonic stem cells. Our double reporter line utilizes two… Click to show full abstract

AIMS We prospectively isolate and characterize first and second heart field- and nodal-like cardiomyocytes using a double reporter line from human embryonic stem cells. Our double reporter line utilizes two important transcription factors in cardiac development, TBX5 and NKX2-5. TBX5 expression marks first heart field progenitors and cardiomyocytes while NKX2-5 is expressed in nearly all myocytes of the developing heart (excluding nodal cells). We address the shortcomings of prior work in the generation of heart-field specific cardiomyocytes from induced pluripotent stem cells and provide a comprehensive early developmental transcriptomic as well as electrophysiological analyses of these three populations. METHODS AND RESULTS Transcriptional, immunocytochemical, and functional studies support the cellular identities of isolated populations based on the expression pattern of NKX2-5 and TBX5. Importantly, bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing analyses provide evidence of unique molecular signatures of isolated first and second heart-field cardiomyocytes, as well as nodal-like cells. Extensive electrophysiological analyses reveal dominant atrial action potential phenotypes in first and second heart fields in alignment with our findings in single-cell RNA sequencing. Lastly, we identify two novel surface markers, POPDC2 and CORIN, that enables purification of cardiomyocytes and first heart field cardiomyocytes, respectively. CONCLUSIONS We describe a high yield approach for isolation and characterization of human embryonic stem cell-derived heart field specific and nodal-like cardiomyocytes. Obtaining enriched populations of these different cardiomyocyte subtypes increases the resolution of gene expression profiling during early cardiogenesis, arrhythmia modeling, and drug screening. This paves the way for the development of effective stem cell therapy to treat diseases that affect specific regions of the heart or chamber-specific congenital heart defects. TRANSLATIONAL PERSPECTIVE Myocardial infarction leads to irreversible loss of cardiomyocytes and eventually heart failure. Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) can be differentiated to cardiomyocytes and are considered a potential source of cell therapy for cardiac regeneration. However, current differentiation strategies yield a mixture of cardiomyocyte subtypes and safety concerns stemming from the use of a heterogenous population of cardiomyocytes have hindered its application. Here, we report generation of enriched heart field-specific cardiomyocytes using a hESC double reporter. Our study facilitates investigating early human cardiogenesis in vitro and generating chamber-specific cardiomyocytes to treat diseases that affect specific regions of the heart.

Keywords: heart; heart field; specific cardiomyocytes; field specific; stem

Journal Title: Cardiovascular research
Year Published: 2021

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