Molecular and cellular mechanisms of second heart field development in zebrafish.

生物学中的一个基本问题是器官如何发育并呈现其成熟的成人形式。对于心脏来说尤其如此，它必须在发育中的胚胎中继续维持血液流动，同时生长和发育。一个令人惊讶的发现是，大部分心脏发育是通过向已经跳动的心管添加细胞而发生的。 一组称为“次级心脏区域”（SHF）的细胞迁移到心脏中，并形成成熟心脏的大部分，包括右心室、流出道、大部分心房和分隔4个腔室的隔膜。SHF添加发生在小鼠中，该模型通常用于研究心脏发育，此时胚胎正在子宫中发育，因此很难详细观察这一关键过程。由于其光学清晰，快速的外部发育和遗传方法的顺从性，斑马鱼已成为研究心脏发育的有力工具。我的团队最近发现，斑马鱼心脏的发育也涉及到SHF样细胞群的增加。由于心脏发育可以在斑马鱼胚胎中实时可视化，我们现在可以以迄今为止使用的小鼠模型中不可能的方式检查SHF。

A fundamental question in biology is how organs develop and assume their mature, adult form. This is especially true for the heart, which must continue to maintain blood flow in the developing embryo while growing and developing. A surprising finding has been that much of heart development occurs by addition of cells to the already beating heart tube. A group of cells termed the "secondary heart field" (SHF) migrates into the heart and forms a large portion of the mature heart, including the right ventricle, outflow tract, much of the atria and septa that separate the 4 chambers. SHF addition occurs in mice, the model typically used to study heart development, at at time when the embryo is developing in the uterus, making detailed observation of this key process very difficult. Due to its optical clarity, rapid external development and amenability to genetic approaches, the zebrafish has become a powerful tool to study how heart development. My group has recently found that development of the zebrafish heart also involves addition of a SHF-like population of cells. As heart development can be visualized in real-time in the zebrafish embryo, we are now positioned to examine the SHF in a way not possible in the mouse model used to date.