Sophie Kussauer

The project addresses the generation and establishment of programmed pacemaker cells for an in vitro drug testing possibility to perform predictive tests. This may lead to an improved treatment of cardiac arrhythmias or an accurate identification of potential drug molecules at a very early stage of development. Important benefits will arise in verifying the safety of a wide variety of medicines while reducing animal testing. For more information you may visit our project website at ...

Single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) provides high-resolution insights into complex tissues. Cardiac tissue, however, poses a major challenge due to the delicate isolation process and the large size of mature cardiomyocytes. Regardless of the experimental technique, captured cells are often impaired and some capture sites may contain multiple or no cells at all. All this refers to “low quality” potentially leading to data misinterpretation. Common standard quality control parameters involve the ...

For scRNA-Seq, iSABs were dissociated using the Primary Cardiomyocyte Isolation Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific) before library preparation was performed using the 10xGenomics system with subsequent sequencing on the HighSeq4000 (Illumina). The mouse-SAN scRNA-Seq protocol is described in Goodyer et al. Preprocessing of raw sequencing data from iSABs relied on tools of the Cell Ranger Software (v.6.1.0) as was the procedure in Goodyer et al. Downstream analyses were conducted similar for both ...

This file contains the detailed experimental protocol for the cultivation of "induced sinoatrial bodies (iSABs), the scRNA-Seq procedure as well as the general computational workflow for data processing. The R-script is provided separately.