Regrowing Hearts

For centuries, humans have marvelled at lizards’ ability to regrow lost tails. Our fragile bodies just don’t have this same natural capacity for regrowth, but other species’ tricks of regeneration do present a tantalising prospect: if we can understand them, can we harness similar mechanisms ourselves? Zebrafish, for example, can recover from heart injuries in a way humans cannot. The zebrafish heart pictured is well on the way to recovery one week after an injury (bottom), as new cardiomyocytes – heart muscle cells – are generated by nearby cells to replace lost ones. Most of our heart cells don’t have that same instinct to kick into action and produce new material when needed, but recent research suggests that if we can pinpoint the mechanism that prompts it in zebrafish cells, there’s a chance the human equivalents could be encouraged to do the same, meaning broken hearts could heal themselves.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image by Amy L. Dickson and Kenneth D. Poss, Duke University. First published on the cover of Science, June 2017
• Department of Cell Biology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA
• Image copyright held by original authors
• Related research published in Science, November 2016