Comparative Transcriptomic Analysis of Embryonic Hearts in Atf4 Exon 2 and Exon 2–3 Conditional Knockout Mice

This dataset comprises RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) profiles of E11.5 embryonic hearts from two Atf4 conditional knockout (cKO) mouse models, targeting different exons of the gene. In one model, exons 2 and 3 were floxed and excised in cardiomyocytes using the Xmlc2-Cre driver, while the second model involved deletion of exon 2 only. The aim of this study is to determine whether Atf4 exon-targeting strategy influences transcriptomic outcomes and to evaluate the impact of ATF4 deficiency on early cardiac development. RNA-seq was performed on ventricular tissues from both models and their respective littermate controls, each with four biological replicates. The dataset serves to clarify the necessity and function of ATF4 in the embryonic heart using refined conditional knockout strategies. Overall design: To investigate the role of ATF4 in heart development, we generated two cardiomyocyte-specific Atf4 knockout mouse lines using Xmlc2-Cre. The first model floxed both exons 2 and 3 of Atf4 (Atf4 fl(e2/3)), while the second model floxed only exon 2 (Atf4 fl(e2)). Embryos were harvested at E11.5, and ventricular tissue was microdissected from each embryo. Total RNA was extracted and used for Illumina stranded mRNA library preparation. Libraries were sequenced on the Illumina HiSeq 6000 platform to a depth of 30-70 million paired-end reads per sample. Each genotype (control and cKO) was analyzed with four biological replicates.