Transcriptomic analysis of DMSO treatment on mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) during cardiac transdifferentiation

Cardiac transdifferentiation represents an attractive way of reversing heart damage caused by myocardial infarction. Yet, it is still in pre-clinical stage mainly due to the lack of efficacy with current transdifferentiation protocols. Here, we describe that dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) is capable of augmenting cardiomyocyte transdifferentiation in vitro. Treatment of Gata4, Hand2, Mef2c and Tbx5 (GHMT) - transduced mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) with 1% DMSO induced ~5 fold increase in the percentage of Myh6-mCherry+ cells, and significantly increased the global expression of cardiac genes. Transcriptomic studies were carried out to explore the underlying mechanism of how DMSO may enhance cardiac transdifferentiation. Overall design: RNA-seq was carried out on both uninfected and GHMT-transduced cells that were treated with 1% DMSO from D2, 7 and 21, with their respective untreated controls