Insulin inhibits cardiac mesoderm, not mesendoderm, formation during cardiac differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells and modulation of canonical Wnt signaling can rescue this inhibition.

ABSTRACT: The study of the regulatory signaling hierarchies of human heart development is limited by a lack of model systems that can reproduce the precise developmental events that occur during human embryogenesis. The advent of human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) technology and robust cardiac differentiation methods affords a unique opportunity to monitor the full course of cardiac induction in vitro. Here, we show that stage-specific activation of insulin signaling strongly inhibited cardiac differentiation during a monolayer-based differentiation protocol that used transforming growth factor β superfamily ligands to generate cardiomyocytes. However, insulin did not repress cardiomyocyte differentiation in a defined protocol that used small molecule regulators of canonical Wnt signaling. By examin

SUBMITTER: Lian X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3582800 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature