Australian scientists understand the genes involved in heart development used sequencing data to help pinpoint genes invovled in heart cell development.
The findings of the study are published in the journal Cell Stem Cell. Dr. Nathan Palapant, of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland said offers insights for treating heart diseaes.
“We think the answers to heart repair almost certainly lie in understanding heart development,” Palapant said. “If we can get to grips with the complex choreography of how the heart builds, we’re well placed to find new approaches to helping it rebuild after damage.”
A leading cause of death
Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States and is estimated to be responsible for 31% of all deaths globally.
This disease encompasses a wide variety of conditions that all effect how well your heart is able to pump blood to the rest of your body. One of the reasons that heart disease is so devastating is because, unlike many other organs in our bodies, heart tissue is not able to repair itself once it is damaged.
The team used single‑cell RNA sequencing to identify genes involved in heart cell development. This method measured how 17,000 genes turned on and off during heart‑cell formation in 40,000 human pluripotent stem cells. These stem cells were experimentally directed to become heart cells. The result—a first‑of‑its‑kind dataset—now serves as a major resource for scientists studying heart development and disease.
Other questions addressed
The study also addressed a key question: how closely do lab‑grown cells match real human cells? It’s known that in‑vitro heart cells differ from mature heart cells in the body, but the specifics were unclear. The researchers found that HOPX, an early marker of heart cell development, is not always expressed at the right time in lab‑grown cells. This mis‑expression alters downstream genes and may explain why in‑vitro heart cells differ from human heart cells.
They also discovered more about HOPX and how it controls developing heart cells. HOPX plays a role how those cell go from an immature, dividing state to a mature, non‑dividing state. This finding shows that the dataset can reveal differences between lab‑grown and mature cells. It also deepen our understanding of how heart cells develop.
Joseph Powell, another lead author, explained the importance of this work.
“Each cell goes through its own series of complex, nuanced changes. They are all different, and changes in one cell affect the activity of other cells. By tracking those changes, we can learn about how different heart cells are controlled. We can better understand how they work together to build the heart.”