Sequencing every step in the transformation of stem cells into heart cells

The accessible chromatin landscape of cardiac progenitors: characterizing regulatory elements on a genome-wide scale

Researchers are untangling the complex genetic interactions during heart cell development, to underpin stem cell treatments for heart disease. When the heart develops in the embryo, stem cells quickly change to become early heart cells, by switching on and off networks of genes at different times. Understanding this complex process is important, because stem cell therapy holds great promise for creating new heart cells to repair the damage caused by disease or even grow new hearts for transplant. However, our current knowledge of these gene networks is still limited. These researchers hope to decipher the gene regulatory networks inside stem cells as they differentiate into heart cells. To do this, they will use state-of-art technology to identify all the ‘active’ regions of DNA in developing heart cells. The ‘active’ regions of the DNA are loosely packed, which are permissive for factor binding and are therefore hotspots for regulation of gene expression. The team will run this analysis on heart cells at different stages of development in chicken embryos. This will reveal when activation and deactivation of different genes takes place, and bring us closer to growing human heart cells in the lab, for innovative new treatments.