Comparative Study of Transcriptome in the Hearts Isolated from Mice, Rats, and Humans

The heart is a significant organ in mammalian life, and the heartbeat mechanism has been an essential focus of science. However, few studies have focused on species differences. Accordingly, challenges remain in studying genes that have universal functions across species and genes that determine species differences. Here, we analyzed transcriptome data in mouse, rat, and human atria, ventricles, and sinoatrial nodes (SA) obtained from different platforms and compared them by calculating specificity measure (SPM) values in consideration of species differences. Among the three heart regions, the species differences in SA were the greatest, and we searched for genes that determined the essential characteristics of SA, which was SHOX2 in our criteria. The SPM value of SHOX2 was prominently high across species. Similarly, by calculating SPM values, we identified 3 atrial-specific, 11 ventricular-specific, and 17 SA-specific markers. Ontology analysis identified 70 cardiac region- and species-specific ontologies. These results suggest that reanalyzing existing data by calculating SPM values may identify novel tissue-specific genes and species-dependent gene expression. This study identified the importance of SHOX2 as an SA-specific transcription factor, a novel cardiac regional marker, and species-dependent ontologies.