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Apela Promotes Cardiomyocyte Differentiation from Transgenic Human Embryonic Stem Cell Lines

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Abstract

Although embryonic stem (ES) cells (ESCs) may be a promising donor source for the repair of infarcted or ischemic heart tissues, their successful application in regenerative medicine has been hampered by difficulties in enriching, identifying, and selecting cardiomyocytes from the differentiating cells. We established transgenic human ES cell lines by transcriptional control of the α-cardiac myosin heavy chain (α-MHC) promoter driving green fluorescent protein (GFP) expression. Differentiated GFP-expressing cells display the characteristics of cardiomyocytes (CMs). Apela, a recently identified short peptide, up-regulated the expression of the cardiac-restricted transcription factors Tbx5 and GATA4 as well as differentiated the cardiomyocyte markers α-MHC and β-MHC. Flow cytometric analysis showed that apela increased the percentage of GFP-expressing cells in the beating foci of the embryoid bodies. The percentage of cardiac troponin T (TNT)-positive cells and the protein expression of TNT were increased in the ES cell-derived CMs with apela treatment. Functionally, the contractile frequency of the ES-derived CMs responded appropriately to the vasoactive drugs isoprenaline and carbachol. Our work presented a protocol for specially labelling and enriching CMs by combining transgenic human ES cell lines and exogenous growth factor treatment.

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Award No. 81570365). We thank Dawei Gong, Rongze Yang, and Daozhan Yu from the University of Maryland School of Medicine for their valuable help in experiments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Nanjing Brain Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

    Zhi Wang & Jin Huang

  2. Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Nanjing Chest Hospital, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

    Zhi Wang & Jin Huang

  3. Department of Cardiology, Nanjing Brain Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, No. 264 Guangzhou Road, Nanjing, 210029, People’s Republic of China

    Zhi Wang

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  1. Zhi Wang
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Wang, Z., Huang, J. Apela Promotes Cardiomyocyte Differentiation from Transgenic Human Embryonic Stem Cell Lines. Appl Biochem Biotechnol 189, 396–410 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12010-019-03012-2

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