Single-cell Transcriptomic Profiling Unveils Cardiac Cell-type Specific Response to Maternal Hyperglycemia Underlying the Risk of Congenital Heart Defects

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most prevalent structural malformations of the heart affecting ∼1% of live births. To date, both damaging genetic variations and adverse environmental exposure such as maternal diabetes have been found to cause CHD. Clinical studies show ∼fivefold higher risk of CHD in the offspring of mothers with pregestational diabetes. Maternal pregestational diabetes affects the gene regulatory networks key to proper cardiac development in the fetus. However, the cell-type specificity of these gene regulatory responses to maternal diabetes and their association with the observed cardiac defects in the fetuses remains unknown. To uncover the transcriptional responses to maternal diabetes in the early embryonic heart, we used an established murine model of pregestational diabetes. In this model, we have previously demonstrated an increased incidence of CHD. Here, we show maternal hyperglycemia (matHG) elicits diverse cellular responses during heart development by single-cell RNA-sequencing in embryonic hearts exposed to control and matHG environment. Through differential gene-expression and pseudotime trajectory analyses of this data, we identified changes in lineage specifying transcription factors, predominantly affecting Isl1 + second heart field progenitors and Tnnt2 + cardiomyocytes with matHG. Using in vivo cell-lineage tracing studies, we confirmed that matHG exposure leads to impaired second heart field-derived cardiomyocyte differentiation. Finally, this work identifies matHG-mediated transcriptional determinants in cardiac cell lineages elevate CHD risk and show perturbations in Isl1 -dependent gene-regulatory network ( Isl1-GRN ) affect cardiomyocyte differentiation. Functional analysis of this GRN in cardiac progenitor cells will provide further mechanistic insights into matHG-induced severity of CHD associated with diabetic pregnancies.