The Transcriptome Responses of Cardiomyocyte Exposed to Hypothermia

Hypothermia affects the body in positive and negative consequences. In cardiac, hypothermia depresses myocardial contraction, slows conduction, and decreases metabolic rate. However, little is known about the molecular mechanism. Here we compare the genes expression of human adult ventricular cardiomyocyte cells (AC16) treated with hypothermia, trying to find changes under different temperatures and then elucidate the candidate genes that may play important roles in the response to hypothermia. A total of 2413 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified by microarray hybridization, which provided abundant data for further analysis. Gene Ontology enrichment analysis revealed that genes related to gene transcriptions, protein and lipid metabolic were significantly enriched. KEGG analysis showed that DEGs were significantly enriched in TGF-β pathway and cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, which may play important roles in response to hypothermia. A set of TFs (CPBP, Churchill, NF-AT1, GKLF, SRY, ZNF333, ING4, myogenin, DRI1 and CRX) was recognized to be the functional layer of key nodes, which mapped the signal of hypothermia to transcriptome. These identified DEGs, pathways and predicted TF could facilitate further investigations of the detailed molecular mechanisms, making it possible to take advantage of the potential applications of hypothermia in broader ranger AC16 cell lines was treated by hypothermia (n=3) and control group (n=3) for 6 hours.