Find in Library

Successful heart development depends on the careful orchestration of a network of transcription factors and signaling pathways. In recent years, in vitro cardiac differentiation using human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) has been used to uncover the intricate gene-network regulation involved in the proper formation and function of the human heart. Here, we searched for uncharacterized cardiac-development genes by combining a temporal evaluation of human cardiac specification in vitro with an analysis of gene expression in fetal and adult heart tissue. We discovered that <i>CARDEL</i> (CARdiac DEvelopment Long non-coding RNA; LINC00890; SERTM2) expression coincides with the commitment to the cardiac lineage. <i>CARDEL</i> knockout hPSCs differentiated poorly into cardiac cells, and hPSC-derived cardiomyocytes showed faster beating rates after controlled overexpression of <i>CARDEL</i> during differentiation. Altogether, we provide physiological and molecular evidence that <i>CARDEL</i> expression contributes to sculpting the cardiac program during cell-fate commitment.