Abstract Body (Do not enter title and authors here): Introduction: Congenital heart diseases (CHDs) are the leading cause of childhood morbidity and mortality. The dysregulation of several cardiac transcription factors (TFs) leads to CHD. The coordination of several cardiac TFs is required and essential for cardiogenesis. However, the mechanisms to acquire its cardiac cell identity remain unclear.
Hypothesis: Mutant Tbx5 dysregulates embryogenesis during mesoderm specification, prior to its expression in the tissues in Holt-Oram syndrome.
Methods: Using cellular physiology and multiomics analysis in both human ES cells and a zebrafish model of TBX5 germline mutation. we evaluated embryonic structure and function, prior to the onset of gastrulation in the context of both heterozygous and homozygous TBX5 mutation.
Results: Zebrafish time course transcriptome profiles over gastrulation revealed that loss of Tbx5 impacted transcriptional profiles at the blastula stage. Single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) on 16243 zebrafish blastula stage cells showed loss of Tbx5 impacted transcription noise at the blastula stage prior to the expression of zygotic Tbx5 with associated effects on chromatin accessibility using omni-assay for transposase-accessible chromatin (ATAC) and evidence of aberrant Wnt signaling even at the blastula stage. Embryo-wide cell structure and function were abnormal in both Tbx5 mutant zebrafish heterozygotes or homozygotes. To validate Undifferentiated human ES cell H3K4me3 Cleavage Under Targets & Release Using Nuclease (CUT&RUN) also showed abnormal Wnt signaling in TBX5 homozygous mutation and TBX5 CUT&RUN showed aberrant mesoderm pathway. Calcium imaging analysis demonstrated the lowest excitation frequency in TBX5 homozygous mutation prior to mesoderm specification. TBX5 homozygous human ES derived mesoderm cells exhibited low expression levels of mesoderm marker genes compared to TBX5 wild type mesoderm.
Conclusion: Integrating single cell physiology and multi-omics technologies, we idneifified fundamental dysregulation of embryogenesis in mutant cardiac-restricted gene disorder prior to mesoderm specification or the zygotic expression of the mutant gene. These findings suggest that Tbx5 started to determine cell fate prior to mesoderm specification by altering chromatin accessibilities and histone modification. Tbx5 affected mesoderm differentiation by influencing Wnt signaling and cell physiology.