Abstract
Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most common type of birth defect, and the leading cause of fetal mortality. The long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) uc.457 is differentially expressed in cardiac tissue from patients with a ventricular septal defect; however, its role in cardiac development and CHD remains unknown. In the present study, the role of uc.457 in the differentiation and maturation of cardiomyocytes was investigated. Bioinformatics approaches were employed to analyze putative transcription factor (TF) regulation, histone modifications and the biological functions of uc.457. Subsequently, uc.457 overexpression and small interfering RNA‑mediated knockdown were performed to evaluate the functional role of the lncRNA in the dimethyl sulfoxide‑induced differentiation of P19 cells into cardiomyocytes. Bioinformatics analyses predicted that uc.457 binds to TFs associated with cardiomyocyte growth and cardiac development. Cell Counting Kit‑8 assays demonstrated that uc.457 overexpression inhibited cell proliferation, whereas knockdown of uc.457 enhanced the proliferation of differentiating cardiomyocytes. Additionally, reverse transcription‑quantitative polymerase chain reaction and western blot analyses revealed that overexpression of uc.457 suppressed the mRNA and protein expression of histone cell cycle regulation defective homolog A, natriuretic peptide A, cardiac muscle troponin T and myocyte‑specific enhancer factor 2C. Collectively, the results indicated that overexpression of uc.457 inhibited the differentiation and proliferation of cardiomyocytes, suggesting that dysregulated uc.457 expression may be associated with CHD.