The adult cell is the merit of regenerating the heart of zebra fish

2010/05/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Biokimika
• Zoologia

Adult cells in the heart of zebra fish separate from adjacent cells, slightly change their natural form, and begin to give new cells when they lose part of their heart. Specifically, the cells adjacent to the cut perform this formation function.

The journal Nature has published two articles in which researchers from the University of Duke and others from the Center of Regenerative Medicine of Barcelona and the Salk Institute of California report on the research carried out on the regenerative capacity of the hearts of zebra fish.

Zebra fish, and other animals, are able to reproduce the parts of the body lost, and scientists wanted to know the mechanism by which they did. Well, both groups of researchers have come to the same conclusion, that is, they have seen that in the case of the hearts of zebra fish, adult cells are responsible for regeneration and not stem cells. To do this, both groups took advantage of the green fluorescent protein to experiment.

A group introduced the gene to produce this protein in the adult cells of the heart. By removing a part of the heart and completing it by itself, they observed that in the reformed part the proteins produced a fluorescent protein, so they were produced from adult cells of the heart.

The other group transformed the fish, causing the fluorescent protein to occur only in the expression of a specific gene. This gene is only expressed in the embryo phase. Well, they observed that in adult cells that assumed the function of completing the lost part this gene was activated, which began to produce green protein.