Heart attacks cause parts of the heart’s tissue to die, reducing its capacity to eject blood. There’s been recent evidence that the heart does indeed grow new cells after early childhood development, but the source of these new cells has been an intriguing mystery. In order to identify where new cardiomyocytes come from, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) used fluorescent colored proteins to track their origin.
The big mystery is whether new cardiomyoctyes originate from adult cardiomyoctyes that divide for some reason, or whether cardiac progenitor stem cells are the real source. The UCLA team employed fluorescent-colored proteins, produced within genetically engineered lab mice, that were produced only within certain cell groups. Specifically, the fluorescent proteins were manufactured by existing cardiomyocytes and cardiac progenitor cells. Having four different colored proteins provided the team the resolution to better distinguish different groups of cells.
As the tagged cells divided, the color markers transferred to both of each pair of cells, allowing the researchers to see which cells create new color spots and which don’t. The final results were published in Nature Communications.
Here’s a video of a reconstruction of the proteins moving as the heart grows:
Study in Nature Communications: Analysis of cardiomyocyte clonal expansion during mouse heart development and injury…
Via: UCLA…