Population RNA-seq of human ESC-derived cardiac derivatives

In vitro cardiac differentiation of human ESCs recapitulates in vivo embryonic heart development, and thus, serves as an excellent tool to investigate human cardiac development. Identification of molecular signatures during cardiac differentiation of human ESCs is instrumental for advancing our understanding of human cardiogenesis. We, as well as others have improved cardiac differentiation protocols significantly in recent years; however, detailed molecular mechanisms involved in cardiac lineage commitment have not yet been clearly defined. Based on this, we tried to identify the cellular hierarchies and molecular signatures of each of the in vitro human ESC-differentiating cardiac cell lineages through the well-established cardiac differentiatio protocol by Wnt signaling modulation and the FACS-sorted population RNA-seq analyses.