Cardiac Development Long non-coding RNA (CARDEL) is activated during human heart development and contributes to cardiac specification and homeostasis

Successful heart development depends on the careful orchestration of a network of transcription factors and signaling pathways. In recent years, the in vitro cardiac differentiation using human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) has been used to uncover the intricate gene network regulation involved in the proper formation and function of the human heart. Here, we searched for uncharacterized cardiac developmental genes by combining a temporal evaluation of the human cardiac specification in vitro with the analysis of fetal and adult heart tissue gene expression. We discovered that CARDEL (CARdiac DEvelopment Long non-coding RNA; LINC00890; SERTM2) expression coincides with the commitment to the cardiac lineage. CARDEL knockout hPSCs differentiated poorly in cardiac cells, and hPSC-derived cardiomyocytes showed faster beating rates after CARDEL controlled overexpression during differentiation. Altogether, we demonstrate physiological and molecular evidence that CARDEL expression contributes to sculpting the cardiac program during cell-fate commitment.