Single-cell RNA-seq of the mouse developing heart (pilot study)

The vertebrate heart is the first organ to form in the embryo and is composed of mesodermal progenitors that arise in an area termed the cardiac crescent. These give rise not only to muscle cells but also to a variety of other cell types, all of which work together to allow the heart to beat rhythmically. Current understanding of when and how these different cell types arise during early cardiogenesis is limited. Therefore, we microdissected the cardiac crescent region of mouse embryos at different stages of development -from when the structure is first present until the linear heart tube (LHT) stage- and performed single-cell RNA-sequencing. The present submission contains pilot data from the LHT.