Telomerase is essential for cardiac differentiation and sustained metabolism of human cardiomyocytes II

In this study, we employed an inducible CRISPRi human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) line to silence TERT expression enabling the generation of hiPSCs and hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes with long and short telomeres. Reduced telomerase activity and shorter telomere lengths of hiPSCs strongly hampered their differentiation potential towards cardiomyocytes The bulk RNA seq was performed on CRISPRi TERT hiPSC line with 4 different conditions in a doxycycline inducible CRISPRi TERT hiPSC line. The telomerase activity and telomere length were altered at the hiPSC stage to give rise to - long telomeres (C2 group, no doxycycline), intermediate telomeres (D2 group- 2 passages with doxycycline) and short telomeres (D5 group-5 passages with doxycycline) and reversed (R2 group-2 passages without doxycycline from the D5 group).