RNA-Seq Analysis Reveals DPYSL2 and PNKD Promotes Cardiomyocytes Differentiation during Reprogramming

Cardiomyocytes are terminally differentiated cells in the heart, whose injuries leads to severe health issue including cardiac failure and even death. Traditional medical procedure failed to rescue damaged cardiomyocytes and hence cannot cure severe myocardial damage. This is probably caused by the irreplaceability of limited cardiomyocytes number in our heart. Fortunately, recent studies reveal induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can be trained to differentiating into cardiomyocytes, opening the possibility of replacing damaged cardiomyocytes by reprogrammed iPSCs, though many remains unknow during cardiomyocytes reprogramming. In this project, we analyzed multiple RNA-Seq data during cardiomyocytes differentiation and reprogramming. We found potential candidate genes DPYSL2 and PNKD as well as several other genes that might play an important role in regulating cardiomyocytes reprogramming. We also proposed the possible mechanisms for these candidate genes based on their genetic nature as well as multi-omic data from public database. Hopefully, these studies could provide new insights on how cardiomyocytes differentiation were regulated during reprogramming and hence improving current iPSCs therapy for myocardial damage.