Cardiac Fibrosis in Dilated Cardiomyopathy: Transcriptomics Insights, Histological Correlations, and Organoid Model Verifications [RNA-seq I]

Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) represents a leading cause of heart failure among younger adults. Despite endomyocardial biopsy (EMB) transcriptome enriching our understanding of DCM, the link between its gene expression and phenotype remains unclear. RNA-seq analysis of 58 DCM samples and 12 publicly available control samples unveiled about 25,000 transcripts. A principal component analysis highlighted a distinct DCM-control separation. WGCNA revealed four transcriptome modules strongly associated with DCM. The purple module, which is the DCM-related module, was enriched with fibrosis-related genes and showed FSTL3 as a pivotal DCM-associated gene. Overall design: Right ventricular septal biopsies were obtained. DCM biopsies transcriptome data were compared with non-failing left ventricular samples (n=12) previously published datasets that are publicly available in the NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database from GSE11625. Re-analysed Samples PRJNA477855: Ctrl_1 GSM3219559 SAMN09484150 SRX4297607 Ctrl_2 GSM3219560 SAMN09484149 SRX4297608 Ctrl_3 GSM3219561 SAMN09484148 SRX4297609 Ctrl_4 GSM3219562 SAMN09484147 SRX4297610 Ctrl_5 GSM3219563 SAMN09484145 SRX4297611 Ctrl_6 GSM3219564 SAMN09484144 SRX4297612 Ctrl_7 GSM3219565 SAMN09484143 SRX4297613 Ctrl_8 GSM3219566 SAMN09484142 SRX4297614 Ctrl_9 GSM3219567 SAMN09484141 SRX4297615 Ctrl_10 GSM3219568 SAMN09484139 SRX4297616 Ctrl_11 GSM3219569 SAMN09484138 SRX4297617 Ctrl_12 GSM3219570 SAMN09484137 SRX4297618