Towards a Human Cardiac Cell Atlas

Establish best practice protocols for cardiac single-cell dissociation and preservation; compare and advance sequencing methods, and evaluate experimental replicability in the heart; explore cardiac cell populations comprising distinct heart structures and locate cardiac cells in 3D space.

An experimental protocol on dissociation and sequencing of cardiomyocytes is now openly available, detailing the use of drop-seq (in collaboration with the lab of Anidita Basu) to encapsulate large cells like cardiomyocytes. The Hübner lab and collaborators developed a variety of techniques, including a spatial transcriptomics-like approach and the use of zebrafish as a model system to observe cell type specific differences across the heart.