Analysis of the transcriptional regulatory network: underlying heart development

• Main Author: Machado, Rui Sotero Rodrigues
• Publication Date: 2013
• Format: Master thesis
• Language: eng
• Source: Repositórios Científicos de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP)
• Download full: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/7064
• topic: Ciências biomédicas; Coração; Desenvolvimento; Células estaminais embrionárias; Cardiomiocitos

Heart development is a highly complex process with a series of precisely spatially and temporally ordered events on molecular level. To understand how these events are controlled and coordinated, it is necessary to study the underlying gene expression and its regulation. While many studies have been carried out in the examination of single genes and their expression patterns, comprehensive analyses of genome-wide expression profiles associated with cardiomyogenesis (i.e. the differentiation of stem cells into cardiomyocytes) are still rare. In fact, no study exists to date which compares and consolidates the publicly available genome-wide measurement for cardiomyogenesis. Such endeavour however is important, as it is well known that individual microarray studies can be seriously compromised by artefacts. In contrast, the combination of various expression studies, which was performed in my study, can lead to more reliable results and help elucidate the different aspects of heart development and repair. Furthermore, a brief study was performed regarding the potential risk of originating cancer or teratomas from stem cell therapy. Finally, I carried out a network-based analysis, to identify regulatory actions between genes, based on published interaction data. This type of analysis can also help to identify novel genes with a role in heart development and provide new valuable targets to future experimental laboratorial analysis. The combination of the multiple dataset is thus an important approach to gain better insights of the different heart development processes as well as regenerative medicine applied to the heart.