(Image: Vikas Gupta, Duke University Medical Center)
Our cardiac muscles work without rest until we die, but how does a heart form in the first place?
Vikas Gupta and colleagues at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, have found that zebrafish's hearts are formed from a starting point of just eight single stem cells, one or two of which often dominate the heart's growth.
The researchers followed the heart development using a colour labelling technique that allowed them to track the progeny of each of the starter cardiomyocytes, from embryo to adult.
In this image, a large swathe of cardiac muscle cells (shown in green) - all clones of a single starter cardiomyocyte - expand over the surface of smaller swathes of clones created by other starter cells (shown in purple, red, blue and yellow). Each colour represents the progeny of a different starter cell.
"It was completely unexpected," Gupta says. "I thought the wall would simply thicken in place, but instead there was a network of cells that enveloped the ventricle in a wave."
Researchers may one day be able to channel this growth process in order to help damaged or failing human hearts grow new muscle, suggests Gupta's colleague Ken Poss.
Journal reference: Nature, DOI:10.1038/nature11045
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