Two seemingly disparate signaling pathways -- one that controls organ size in fruit flies and another important for the growth of embryos -- interact in embryonic mouse hearts to restrict cell proliferation and control heart size.
Mammalian hearts have only a scant capacity to regenerate heart muscle cells, known as cardiomyocytes, to repair tissue damaged as a result of a heart attack or heart disease. The new research, linkurl:published today (April 21) in Science,;http://www.sciencemag.org/ suggests it may be possible to interfere with signaling pathways that limit such regeneration to therapeutically promote the production of muscle cells in damaged hearts."It's a fine piece of fundamental developmental biology," said linkurl:Michael Schneider,;http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/people/m.d.schneider/ head of the National Heart and Lung Institute at the Imperial College London, who was not involved...
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neonate mouse hearts Courtesy of Todd Heallen, Janelle Heallen and James Martin, Texas A&M Health Science Center |
Drosophila,Science. Heallen, T., et al., "Hippo Pathway Inhibits Wnt Signaling to Restrain Cardiomyocyte Proliferation and Heart Size," Science, 332:458-61, 2011.
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