Richard Tyser and colleagues have mapped the origins of the embryonic mouse heart at single-cell resolution, helping to define the cell types that make up the heart in the earliest days of development. Their techniques allowed them to identify for a first time a pool of progenitor cells that contributes to the formation of heart muscle cells as well as the early epicardium, the outermost layer of the heart. This layer provides cells and other proteins that guide the development and repair of heart tissue, so a better understanding of its origins could better inform regenerative heart therapies as well as improve our understanding of congenital heart defects. Tyser et al. performed a micro-dissection of a portion of the embryonic mouse heart to observe a very early stage streak of cells called the cardiac crescent transform into the linear heart tube. Combining single-cell RNA sequencing to identify cell types with high-resolution imaging and time-lapse microscopy, the researchers were able to follow the development of distinct populations of progenitor heart cells over about 12 hours of development.
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Journal
Science