Single Cell Transcriptomic Profiling of Cardiac Tissues and Surrounding Tissues During Early Cardiac Development

The specification of distinct cardiac lineages during development is thought to occur prior to the morphogenetic events that lead to chamber formation and acquisition of bona fide atrial or ventricular identity. However, the mechanisms underlying these dynamic early specification events remain poorly understood. In this study, we performed single cell analysis across the time window of progenitor specification, namely at the cardiac crescent (E8.25), primitive heart tube (E8.75) and heart tube (E9.25) stages to uncover the transcriptional heterogeneity of early progenitor cells ,as well as mechanisms underlying differentiation of atrial and ventricular cardiomyocytes and associated cardiac cell types. Overall design: Cells of the early cardiac lineages and surrounding structures were dissected from early Foxa2Cre;mTmG mouse embryos, where expression of EGFP labels Foxa2-lineage traced cells. Cells were dissociated into single-cells for scRNAseq without the need for cell sorting.