Genome-Wide Temporal Profiling of Transcriptome and Open Chromatin of Early Cardiomyocyte Differentiation Derived From hiPSCs and hESCs

Rationale:Recent advances have improved our ability to generate cardiomyocytes from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) and human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). However, our understanding of the transcriptional regulatory networks underlying early stages (ie, from mesoderm to cardiac mesoderm) of cardiomyocyte differentiation remains limited. Objective:To characterize transcriptome and chromatin accessibility during early cardiomyocyte differentiation from hiPSCs and hESCs. Methods and Results:We profiled the temporal changes in transcriptome and chromatin accessibility at genome-wide levels during cardiomyocyte differentiation derived from 2 hiPSC lines and 2 hESC lines at 4 stages: pluripotent stem cells, mesoderm, cardiac mesoderm, and differentiated cardiomyocytes. Overall, RNA sequencing analysis revealed that transcriptomes during early cardiomyocyte differentiation were highly concordant between hiPSCs and hESCs, and clustering of 4 cell lines within each time point demonstrated that chang...