RNA sequencing for human induced pluripotent stem cell cardiomyocyte differentiation

We apply short-read RNA sequencing technology to identify transcripts expressed during four time points of a human induced pluripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocyte differentiation protocol, corresponding to pluripotent, mesoderm, early cardiomyocyte, and cardiomyocyte cell stages. The RNA-seq reads are used to generate custom protein sequence database for proteogenomic applications and downstream mass spectrometry analysis. We demonstrate that this custom RNA-seq-guided proteomics approach can be used to identify protein isoforms that are differentially regulated during cardiac differentiation.