Images of an uninjured zebrafish heart (a,b) and one injured at the tip (IA), (c,d,). sox10-derived cardiomyocytes are shown in red, other myocardial cells in green. The number of the sox10-derived cells increases after injury, and the cells accumulate at the borders of the injury.
It is already known that zebrafish can flexibly regenerate their hearts after injury. An international research group led by Prof. Nadia Mercader of the University of Bern now shows that certain heart muscle cells play a central role in this process. The insights gained could be used to initiate a similar repair process in the human heart. In mammals, including humans, the heart muscle has a very limited capacity to recover after injury. After an acute myocardial infarction, millions of cardiac muscle cells, named cardiomyocytes, die, and are replaced by a scar. Unlike mammals, other vertebrates can recover much better from a cardiac damage. This is the case of some fish, including the zebrafish, a well-established animal model in biomedical research which shares with humans most of its genes.
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