Although the scientific community has over the last 40 years uncovered roughly 100 genes contributing to congenital heart disease, 80 percent of cases still have unknown genetic causes. This is something that challenged Mirana Ramialison, an associate professor at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute. Coming from an engineering, bioinformatics, and developmental genomics background helped Ramialison recognize how much about the heart remains to be discovered. “People think that because the heart is such an important organ, we know everything about it, and it’s only when I approached the heart from a genomics context that I realized how much we don’t know,” Ramialison explained.
The seemingly basic question of “which genes are important for the heart?” spurred Ramialison and her team to pursue a fuller picture. Heart disease research has historically centered on restoring function by improving mechanical kinetics and promoting structural repair, and this has, until recently, overshadowed the fact ...
