研究人员利用干细胞技术、下一代DNA测序和计算工具来将心脏细胞如何变成心脏的“基因组蓝图”拼接在一起。这些发现提供新的希望来对抗威胁生命的心脏缺陷,如心律不齐和室间隔缺损(ventricular septal defect)。
doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2012.07.035
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Dynamic and Coordinated Epigenetic Regulation of Developmental Transitions in the Cardiac Lineage
Joseph A. Wamstad, Jeffrey M. Alexander, Rebecca M. Truty, Avanti Shrikumar, Fugen Li, Kirsten E. Eilertson, Huiming Ding, John N. Wylie, Alexander R. Pico, John A. Capra, Genevieve Erwin, Steven J. Kattman, Gordon M. Keller, Deepak Srivastava, Stuart S. Levine, Katherine S. Pollard, Alisha K. Holloway, Laurie A. Boyer, Benoit G. Bruneau
Heart development is exquisitely sensitive to the precise temporal regulation of thousands of genes that govern developmental decisions during differentiation. However, we currently lack a detailed understanding of how chromatin and gene expression patterns are coordinated during developmental transitions in the cardiac lineage. Here, we interrogated the transcriptome and several histone modifications across the genome during defined stages of cardiac differentiation. We find distinct chromatin patterns that are coordinated with stage-specific expression of functionally related genes, including many human disease-associated genes. Moreover, we discover a novel preactivation chromatin pattern at the promoters of genes associated with heart development and cardiac function. We further identify stage-specific distal enhancer elements and find enriched DNA binding motifs within these regions that predict sets of transcription factors that orchestrate cardiac differentiation. Together, these findings form a basis for understanding developmentally regulated chromatin transitions during lineage commitment and the molecular etiology of congenital heart disease.
来源:生物谷