Short-time glucose exposure of embryonic carcinoma cells impairs their function as terminally differentiated cardiomyocytes.

Abstract The fetal and postnatal phenotype is influenced by developmental conditions experienced prenatally. Among prenatal development metabolic factors are of particular importance as they are supposed to predispose for pathophysiological alterations later in life and to pioneer functional impairment in senescence (metabolic programming). Till now the mechanisms of metabolic programming are not well understood. We have investigated various concentrations of glucose during differentiation of pluripotent P19 embryonic carcinoma cells (ECC) into cardiomyocytes. Undifferentiated P19 cells were exposed to 5 mM (low), 25 mM (control), 40 mM or 100 mM (high) glucose for 48 h during embryoid body (EB) formation, followed by plating and differentiation into cardiomyocytes in vitro with standard glucose supplementation (25 mM) for 10–15 days. The amount of cardiac clusters, the frequency of spontaneous beatings as well as the expression of metabolic and cardiac marker genes and their promoter methylation were measured. We observed a metabolic programming effect of glucose during cardiac differentiation. Whereas the number of beating clusters and the expression of the cardiac marker alpha myosin heavy chain (α-MHC) were comparable in all groups, the frequencies of beating clusters were significantly higher in the high glucose group compared to low glucose. However, neither the insulin receptor (IR) or insulin like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R) nor the metabolic gene glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4) were influenced in RNA expression or in promoter methylation. Our data indicate that a short time glucose stress during embryonic cell determination leads to lasting effects in terminally differentiated cell function.