Genome-Wide Analysis of Gene Program Activation by Defined Cardiac Transcription Factor Tbx5, Gata4 and Myocardin

Background: Cardiac transcription factors are master regulators during heart development. Recently, some were shown to transdifferentiate noncardiac mesoderm cells and cardiac fibroblasts into cardiomyocytes. However, the individual roles of each transcription factors in activating cardiac gene program have not been elucidated. We examined cardiac-specific and genome-wide gene expression in fibroblasts induced with cardiac transcription factors Nkx2.5 (N), Tbx5 (T), Gata4 (G), Myocardin (M) alone or different combinations.

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