TY - JOUR TI - A novel in vitro system for studying cardiomyocyte differentiation with medaka embryonic cells AU - Hyodo, Masao AU - Makino, Shinji AU - Awaji, Yasunori AU - Sakurada, Yohei AU - Ohkubo, Tomoichi AU - Murata, Mitsushige AU - Fukuda, Keiichi AU - Tsuda, Michio T2 - The International Journal of Developmental Biology AB - Our studies revealed that dissociated cells from medaka (the fresh-water fish, Oryzias latipes ) blastula-stage embryos differentiate into many rhythmically contracting cells when incubated with a conditioned medium from a cell line. Analyses of these cells by immunostaining, electron microscopy, expression of marker genes, action potential recordings and pharmacological responses all showed the characteristics of myocardial cells. We succeeded in purifying the cardiac cell-inducing factor from the conditioned medium by 523,100-fold with 8% recovery of the protein. Analysis of its amino-acid sequence by mass spectrometry revealed the factor to be medaka activin A2 (homodimer of inhibin betaA2 subunit). Recombinant human activin A showed the same cardiac cell-inducing activity toward medaka embryonic cells. Our results demonstrate that activin A is a potent factor for medaka myocardial cell differentiation. This culture method should provide a novel and simple experimental system to study cardiomyocyte differentiation in vitro. PY - 2009 DO - 10.1387/ijdb.092850mh VL - 53 IS - 4 SP - 615 EP - 622 J2 - Int. J. Dev. Biol. LA - en SN - 0214-6282 SN - 1696-3547 UR - https://ijdb.ehu.eus/article/092850mh Y2 - 2024/04/28/18:05:22 ER -