The phrase
"mammalian heart" refers to the heart found in mammals, including animals like dogs, cats, and humans. It is the organ responsible for pumping blood throughout the body, allowing mammals to live and function.
Full definition
Such comparisons will help scientists to better understand this lone example
of mammalian heart regeneration, and may ultimately lead to better drugs for treating injury and disease.
In a paper published in the March 25, 2010 issue of Nature, researchers working at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the Center of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona (CMRB) identified a fish heart cell population that is the source of this astonishing healing feat, a finding that could provide insight into
how mammalian hearts might be coaxed into repairing themselves after injury brought on by heart attack.
However, prior to heart failure,
damaged mammalian heart muscle cells enter a save - yourself state known as «hibernation,» in which they cease contracting in an effort to survive.
F. Lescroart, S. Chabab, X. Lin, S. Rulands, C. Paulissen, A. Rodolosse, H. Auer, Y. Achouri, C. Dubois, A. Bondue, B. D. Simons, C. Blanpain Early lineage restriction in temporally distinct populations of Mesp1 progenitors
during mammalian heart development Nature Cell Biology 16, 829 — 840 (2014)
The loss of contractile cells and the inability of the
adult mammalian heart to regenerate is a major cause of cardiac dysfunction and heart failure.
The mammalian heart may possess the ability to renew seriously damaged tissue, researchers say.
So the good news is that
mammalian hearts can undergo a kind of metabolic «downsizing» that is a prelude to cell division.
«If we can decode and read this instruction manual then we can find ways to prove or learn which factors need to be reactivated or shut off in
a mammalian heart in response to an injury.»
Severe cardiac injury in
the mammalian heart, such as a myocardial infarction, leads to a significant loss of cardiomyocytes, which are not replaced.