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Scientists at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney have discovered a critical new gene that it is hoped could help human hearts repair damaged heart muscle after a heart attack. Researchers have identified a genetic switch in zebrafish that turns on cells allowing them to divide and multiply after a heart attack, resulting in the complete regeneration and healing of damaged heart muscle in these fish. It’s already known that zebrafish can heal their own hearts, but how they performed this incredible feat remained unknown, until now. In research recently published in the prestigious journal, Science, the team...

Enlarge Image Expert repair. Muscle cells (green) in a zebrafish heart regenerate lost tissue 7 days (left), 14 days (middle), and 30 days (right) after an injury. Credit: Adapted from Jopling et al., Nature, 464 (25 March 2010) Zebrafish hearts can take a licking and keep on ticking. Even if they lose up to 20% of a ventricle, the animals form a clot that stops bleeding within seconds and then gradually replace the lost tissue. Within a month or so, they are back to normal. The impressive repair work is accomplished not by stem cells in the heart but...

Doctors who have treated heart attack patients with injections of stem cells have had little success so far in making the heart regenerate its stricken tissues. Researchers have now discovered that in nature, hearts are regenerated in a quite different way, one that does not depend on stem cells. The finding may explain the lack of clinical success with the stem cells, as well as suggest new approaches. Humans can regenerate the liver but cannot replace limbs and other organs. But fish and... --snip-- Charles Murry, an expert on heart cell biology at the University of Washington in Seattle, said...

If asked to name the creature most similar to humans, most people would likely pick some sort of primate. Very few would think of zebra fish. But as the researchers at InDanio Bioscience can attest, the striped aquarium staple shares many similarities with humans and could hold the key to greatly improved human health. InDanio, a drug-discovery company based in Toronto's MaRS Discovery District, focuses on nuclear receptors, a class of proteins that are related to some of the most devastating and prevalent diseases on the planet, including immune disorders, obesity, diabetes and most cancers. The problem is, the majority...

Enlarge ImageSweet shot. Different colors reveal sugar groups produced at different times during the development of a zebrafish embryo.Credit: Image courtesy of Carolyn R. Bertozzi Biologists have long sought chemical reactions that can home in on and alter particular molecules while leaving everything around them untouched. Their desire may soon be fulfilled. A team of chemists has developed a reaction that targets specific sugars that decorate proteins and other molecules. So far, the researchers have used the technique to study the embryonic development of zebrafish. But it could one day offer doctors better ways to deliver radioactive imaging agents...