Image of the Day: Taken to Heart

MATTHEW STROUD

Researchers are searching the hearts of model organisms for clues about how protein changes in specific cells play into the onset of skeletal muscle disorders and cardiovascular disease. By studying tissues such as this developing mouse heart from a 16.5 day old embryo, a group from King’s College London is investigating whether thin heart muscle walls result from defects of the coronary vasculature. In this zoomed-in view of the murine heart’s aortic valve, cardiomyocytes appear red, vasculature appears green, and DNA shows up in blue. The scientists describe their approach in an August 2018 review article.