Atf3 Deficiency Promotes Mesodermal Commitment and Enhances Endothelial Differentiation in Embryonic Stem Cells

Ischemic disease has become a major threat to global health, and endothelial cells (ECs) damage is closely associated with its occurrence and development. Cell therapies to repair the endothelium has thus become a treatment approach of great interest, but obtaining clinically approved ECs for such therapies has not been fully established. One possible approach for obtaining ECs from stem cells may be by modulating activating transcription factor three (Atf3) expression; however, its precise involvement in ECs development and differentiation from stem cells remains unclear. In this study, we aimed to elucidate the potential role of Atf3 in embryonic stem cells (ESCs)-to-ECs differentiation. RNA was extracted from mESCs, on days 0, 3, 6, and 9 of differentiation, using TriZol, collected into 5 mL centrifuge tubes, and high-throughput RNA-seq was carried out by HaploX Biotechnology Co to establish a RNA-seq library. The original image files obtained were subjected to base identification and error filtering to obtain sequencing data. Filtered clean reads were compared to the mouse reference genome with HISAT2 software, thereby identifying unique mapped reads.