Specific Lineage differentiation of proepicardial explant cultures

The HH16/17 chicken proepicardium (PE) gives rise to the embryonic epicardium (Epi) which significantly contributes formation of the coronary vasculature during cardiac development. In contrast to explanted Epi cells, explanted PE cells can undergo differentiation into a cardiac myocyte phenotype. In order to assess which genes are associated with PE differentiation into distinc cellular lineages, three interconnented microarray gene-expression time series were performed at time 0, 24, 72 and 120h after incubation with specific growth conditions: 1: Bmp2 + U0126: differentiation towards a cardiomyocyte phenotype 2: F2f2 + Vegf: differentiation towards a vascular epithelial phenotype 3: Fgf2: differentiation towards a epicardial phenotype Gene-expression profiles were determined by hybridizing Cy3 and Cy5 labelled amplified RNA to the ArkGen 20K oligo arrays in a 2-color looped experiment design, i.e., hybridization of successive time-points per array, including dye swaps, resulting in four technical replicates for each time point.