A cross-species multimodal database of gene expression in cardiac hypertrophy

Changes in gene expression determine the pathophysiological response of the heart during increased workload and biomechanical stress.1,2 Understanding the complex gene expression regulation during physiological and pathological stress provides insight into mechanisms that mediate the transition from cardiac hypertrophy to heart failure. We curated and generated a multi-omics database of cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure and exemplified its usage by evaluating the regulation of UCK2, a gene that belongs to a conserved cardiomyocyte hypertrophy gene expression signature with unknown function in heart disease. To provide the community with simple access to the database, we developed CHEERIO (Cardiac HypErtrophy gEne expRessIOn Database), a free and easy-to-use interactive web application to explore rodent and human gene expression during early, late, physiological and pathological cardiac hypertrophy, as well as heart failure at transcriptome, translatome, proteome, bulk and single-cell resolution. CHEERIO is freely available at https://voelkerslab.shinyapps.io/CHEERIO/.