Cardiac precursor differentiation from hESCs by lentiviral promoter drug selection

Several of the essential core transcriptional control elements in human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) have been identified, but the production and function of alternative isoforms in self-renewal, pluripotency and tissue lineage specification remain largely unknown. We have modified the H9 ESC line to allow for drug selection of human pluripotent ESCs and cardiac progenitors. Exon-level microarray expression data from undifferentiated ESCs and day 40 cardiac precursors were used to identify differentially expressed and alternative splice isoforms during differentiation. Keywords: comparison RNA from a homogenous population of undifferentiated hESCs (REX1-neo promoter drug selection) and differentiated day 40 cardiomyocytes (alpha MHC-puro promoter drug selection) was isolated and profiled with exon-tiling arrays.