Bad Timing
Your heart isn't all muscle. Its muscle layer (myocardium) is sandwiched between endocardium and epicardium. Defects in the development of these layers can cause congenital heart disease (CHD), which affects one in 100 newborns. CHD can be caused by a coronary artery fistula (CAF) where a channel, partly comprising smooth muscle, develops between the coronary artery and another part of the heart. A defect in myocardium development may be to blame. Researchers investigated in chick embryos, damaging the myocardium before the epicardium layer forms. The result? Endocardium cells met epicardium cells too early, leading to CAF-like structures. The team then grew quail embryo endometrium (pictured, left) with chick embryo epicardium (right). Fluorescence microscopy revealed that where these different cells met, smooth muscle developed, and where they were apart, smooth muscle was absent. This supports the idea that CAFs form due to the inappropriately timed meeting of these cells.
Written by Lux Fatimathas
Image from work by P. Palmquist-Gomes and colleagues
Department of Animal Biology, Faculty of Sciences, University of MƔlaga, MƔlaga, Spain
Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Published in Experimental & Molecular Medicine, January 2023
You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook
