Role of histone modifiers during human embryonic stem cells into cardiac lineage. Homo sapiens

Human Embryonic Stem (hES) cells are among the promising new avenues as a promising model to study the human development in vitro which otherwise is not possible. Epigenetics is emerging as a major role player in cell fate decisions thus expanding the room to unlock the mechanisms involved. Histone activating methyltransferases occupy a crucial space in transcription initiation machinery that deliver methyl mark/s leading to gene activation. Dimethylation of H3K79 brought about solely by DOT1L has been studied extensively in the context of transcriptional regulation however; its involvement during cardiac differentiation in vitro remains to be uncovered. The present study was undertaken to understand the occupancy of H3K79me2 mark onto the cardiac specific genes during differentiation of human embryonic stem cell lines KIND1 (in-house derived, Kumar et al, 2008) and HES3 (WiCell Research Institute, Inc.). Taken together our study would aid in understanding the in vitro development of cardiac lineage which may further be employed to improve the differentiation strategies and use for pre-clinical studies.