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Starting Together

Insight into the control of repairing damaged heart muscle

01 January 2020

Starting Together

In the first few days and weeks of human – or any other vertebrate animal – development, well before birth, one particular group of cells mobilise and spread around the growing mass, ready to initiate the formation of distinct body parts. These neural crest cells are crucial, and common across species. One area they’ve been seen at work in fish and amphibians is the heart, but it wasn’t clear if the same was true for mammals like us. To investigate, researchers tracked the cells throughout development in living animals, and found that they do contribute to heart ventricles in mice (pictured, with heart cells in green and those derived from neural crest cells in pink), and that in zebrafish they aid growth and repair even in adults. If this ability exists in humans as well, it could be an inbuilt tool for repair following a heart attack.

Written by Anthony Lewis

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BPoD stands for Biomedical Picture of the Day. Managed by the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences until Jul 2023, it is now run independently by a dedicated team of scientists and writers. The website aims to engage everyone, young and old, in the wonders of biology, and its influence on medicine. The ever-growing archive of more than 4000 research images documents over a decade of progress. Explore the collection and see what you discover. Images are kindly provided for inclusion on this website through the generosity of scientists across the globe.

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