During embryonic development, the heart arises from various sources of undifferentiated mesodermal progenitors, with an additional contribution from ectodermal neural crest cells. Mesodermal cardiac progenitors are plastic and multipotent, but are nevertheless specified to a precise heart region and cell type very early during development. Recent findings have defined both this lineage plasticity and early commitment of cardiac progenitors, using a combination of single-cell and population analyses. In this review, we discuss several aspects of cardiac progenitor specification. We discuss their markers, fate potential in vitro and in vivo, early segregation and commitment, and also intrinsic and extrinsic cues regulating lineage restriction from multipotency to a specific cell type of the heart. Finally, we also discuss the subdivisions of the cardiopharyngeal field, and the shared origins of the heart with other mesodermal derivatives, including head and neck muscles.

中文翻译：

---

心咽祖细胞规格：通往心脏和头部肌肉的多条道路。


在胚胎发育过程中，心脏由各种来源的未分化中胚层祖细胞产生，外胚层神经嵴细胞也有额外贡献。中胚层心脏祖细胞具有可塑性和多能性，但在发育早期就被指定为精确的心脏区域和细胞类型。最近的研究结果结合单细胞和群体分析，定义了这种谱系可塑性和心脏祖细胞的早期定型。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了心脏祖细胞规范的几个方面。我们讨论了它们的标记、体外和体内的命运潜力、早期分离和定型，以及调节从多能性到心脏特定细胞类型的谱系限制的内在和外在线索。最后，我们还讨论了心咽区的细分，以及心脏与其他中胚层衍生物（包括头部和颈部肌肉）的共同起源。