Single-cell RNA-seq on enriched cardiac fibroblasts from the healthy, sham or MI hearts of Hif-1a conditional knockout or heterozygous mice

In this project we explore the role of the master hypoxia regulator, Hypoxia inducible factor-1alpha (Hif-1a), in governing cardiac fibroblast (CF) function in homeostasis and following an acute ischaemic injury - myocardial infarction (MI). CF-specific Hif-1a conditional knockout (cKO) mice were generated by breeding Pdgfra-merCremer (PdgfraMCM/+) Cre recombinase driver mice with Hif-1a-floxed mice (Hif-1aflox/). In Hif-1afl/-; PdgfraMCM/+ progeny, Hif-1a could be conditionally deleted in adult CFs by tamoxifen (tam) administration. We also introduced a Cre-dependent R26tdTomato reporter allele allowing marking of Pdgfra+ CFs and their progeny. In this experiment, we first performed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) on tdTomato+ cells from the hearts of healthy cKO or heterozygous (HET) adult, male mice using the 10x Genomics Chromium system. We also performed scRNA-seq on tdTomato+/CD31-/CD45- cells from the hearts of cKO or HET mice at day-3 post-sham or -MI surgery.