title: Enrichment of cardiac differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells by optimizing the hanging drop method.
abstract: Hanging drop (HD) culture is used to induce differentiation of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) into other cell types including cardiomyocytes. However, the factors affecting cardiac differentiation of ESCs with this method remain incompletely understood. We have investigated the effects of the starting number of ESCs in embryoid bodies (EBs) and the time of EB adherence to gelatin-coated plates on cardiac differentiation: cardiac differentiation was increased in the EBs by a larger number of ESCs and was decreased by plating EBs at day 4 or earlier. These two factors can thus be optimized to enrich the cardiac differentiation in ESCs using the HD method.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cardiology, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Yong-Qing
authors.initials: YQ
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Shuang-Lun
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.forename: Hong-Fu
authors.initials: HF
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Jing-Feng
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D018929:Cell Culture Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D053595:Embryonic Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology*; D007150:Immunohistochemistry; D051379:Mice; D032383:Myocytes, Cardiac / Q000166:cytology*; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction