Endothelium in embryonic hematopoietic tissues generates hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells; however, it is unknown how its unique potential is specified. We show that transcription factor Scl/Tal1 is essential for both establishing the hematopoietic transcriptional program in hemogenic endothelium and preventing its misspecification to a cardiomyogenic fate. Scl-/- embryos activated a cardiac transcriptional program in yolk sac endothelium, leading to the emergence of CD31+Pdgfrα+ cardiogenic precursors that generated spontaneously beating cardiomyocytes. Ectopic cardiogenesis was also observed in Scl-/- hearts, where the disorganized endocardium precociously differentiated into cardiomyocytes. Induction of mosaic deletion of Scl in Sclfl/flRosa26Cre-ER T2 embryos revealed a cell-intrinsic, temporal requirement for Scl to prevent cardiomyogenesis from endothelium. Scl-/- endothelium also upregulated the expression of Wnt antagonists, which promoted rapid cardiomyocyte differentiation of ectopic cardiogenic cells. These results reveal unexpected plasticity in embryonic endothelium such that loss of a single master regulator can induce ectopic cardiomyogenesis from endothelial cells. © 2012 Elsevier Inc.
CITATION STYLE
Van Handel, B., Montel-Hagen, A., Sasidharan, R., Nakano, H., Ferrari, R., Boogerd, C. J., … Mikkola, H. K. A. (2012). Scl represses cardiomyogenesis in prospective hemogenic endothelium and endocardium. Cell, 150(3), 590–605. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2012.06.026
Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.