Cardiac differentiation time-courses of human ES cells investigating the requirement for intermediate WNT inhibition

Efficient directed cardiac induction of human embryonic stem cells requires an intermediate inhibition of WNT signaling, shortly after the initial induction of mesoderm. To reveal the significance of the WNT inhibition step during differentiation, two differential time-course analyses were performed - both comparing WNT-inhibited and non-WNT-inhibited samples: In the first time-course, the WNT inhibitor IWP-2 was either added or omitted on days 2 and 3, and in the second time-course, IWP-2 was either added or omitted on days 1 and 2. Total RNA isolated from differentiating in-vitro samples at the indicated time-points and of undifferentiated human ES cells before the induction of differentiation