mCasz1_conditional knockout

The overall goal of our studies is to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanism by which the transcription factor Casz1 functions in murine heart development. We established that Casz1 is expressed in myocardial progenitor cells beginning at E7.5 and in differentiated cardiomyocytes throughout development. We generated conditional Casz1 knockout mice to show that ablation of CASZ1 in Nkx2.5-positive cardiomyocytes leads to cardiac hypoplasia, ventricular septal defects and lethality by E13.5. To identify the pathways and networks by which Casz1 regulates cardiomyocyte development, we used RNA-Seq and identified genes involved in cell proliferation are upregulated in Casz1 mutants compared to wild-type littermates. We conclude that Casz1 is essential for cardiac development and has a pivotal role in regulating part of the cardiac transcriptional program. Overall design: 3 biological replicates of the two genotypes (Nkx2-5+/+,Casz1f/+ and Nkx2-5Cre/+,Casz1f/f) were used for RNA-seq to determine genes that are differentially expressed in the murine heart when Casz1 is mutated. Nkx2-5+/+,Casz1f/+ were used as wild-type controls for comparison.