Proper development and function of the vertebrate heart is vital for embryonic and postnatal life. Many congenital heart defects in humans are associated with disruption of genes that direct the formation or maintenance of atrial and pacemaker cardio...
The vertebrate heart integrates cells from the early-differentiating first heart field (FHF) and the later-differentiating second heart field (SHF), both emerging from the lateral plate mesoderm. In mammals, this process forms the basis for the devel...
The heart is the first functional organ to form during vertebrate development. Congenital heart defects are the most common type of human birth defect, many originating as anomalies in early heart development. The zebrafish model provides an accessib...
The eukaryotic initiation factor 4E binding protein (4E-BP) family is involved in translational control of cell proliferation and pro-angiogenic factors. The zebrafish eukaryotic initiation factor 4E binding protein 3 like (eif4ebp3l) is a member of...
Heart transplantation became a reality at the end of the 1960s as a life-saving option for patients with end-stage heart failure. Static cold storage (SCS) at 4–6 °C has remained the standard for heart preservation for decades. However, SCS only allo...
Congenital heart defects (CHDs) are common human birth defects. Genetic mutations potentially cause the exhibition of various pathological phenotypes associated with CHDs, occurring alone or as part of certain syndromes. Zebrafish, a model organism w...
Animal models of cardiovascular disease are key players in the translational medicine pipeline used to define the conserved genetic and molecular basis of disease. Congenital heart diseases (CHDs) are the most common type of human birth defect and fe...
Cardiac transcription factors orchestrate the complex cellular and molecular events required to produce a functioning heart. Misregulation of the cardiac transcription program leads to embryonic developmental defects and is associated with human cong...
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death in the world. A total of 17.5 million people died of CVDs in the year 2012, accounting for 31% of all deaths globally. Vertebrate animal models have been used to understand cardiac disease...
Background/Objectives: Abnormal development of the second heart field significantly contributes to congenital heart defects, often caused by disruptions in tightly regulated molecular pathways. Smyd1, a gene encoding a protein with SET and MYND domai...
Age-associated organ failure and degenerative diseases have a major impact on human health. Cardiovascular dysfunction has an increasing prevalence with age and is one of the leading causes of death. In contrast to humans, zebrafish have extraordinar...
Long QT syndrome (LQTS) can lead to ventricular arrhythmia and sudden cardiac death. The most common congenital cause of LQTS is mutations in the channel subunits generating the cardiac potassium current IKs. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) have been propose...
Myocardial infarction (MI) is a worldwide condition that affects millions of people. This is mainly caused by the adult human heart lacking the ability to regenerate upon injury, whereas zebrafish have the capacity through cardiomyocyte proliferation...
Heart disease remains the single largest cause of death in developed countries, and novel therapeutic interventions are desperately needed to alleviate this growing burden. The cardiac lymphatic system is the long-overlooked counterpart of the corona...
Zebrafish larvae have emerged as a valuable model for studying heart physiology and pathophysiology, as well as for drug discovery, in part thanks to its transparency, which simplifies microscopy. However, in fluorescence-based optical mapping, the b...
The heart switches its main metabolic substrate from glucose to fatty acids shortly after birth, which is one of reasons for the loss of heart regeneration capability in adult mammals. On the contrary, metabolic shifts from oxidative phosphorylation...
Orchestrated protein synthesis and degradation is fundamental for proper cell function. In muscle, impairment of proteostasis often leads to severe cellular defects finally interfering with contractile function. Here, we analyze for the first time th...
Ischemic heart disease is one of the leading causes of deaths worldwide. A major hindrance to resolving this challenge lies in the mammalian hearts inability to regenerate after injury. In contrast, zebrafish retain a regenerative capacity of the hea...
Zebrafish embryos have been proposed as a cost-effective vertebrate model to study heart function. Many fluorescent genetically encoded Ca2+ indicators (GECIs) have been developed, but those with ratiometric readout seem more appropriate to image a m...
Heart diseases are the leading cause of death for the vast majority of people around the world, which is often due to the limited capability of human cardiac regeneration. In contrast, zebrafish have the capacity to fully regenerate their hearts afte...
The heart is laterally asymmetric. Not only is it positioned on the left side of the body but the organ itself is asymmetric. This patterning occurs across scales: at the organism level, through left–right axis patterning; at the organ level, where t...
Myocardial infarction triggers limited repair in adult mammals but robust regeneration in zebrafish. Epigenetic regulation and immune responses are recognized as critical for successful regeneration. However, the molecular links between these process...
Folic acid, one of the 13 essential vitamins, plays an important role in cardiovascular development. Mutations in folic acid synthesis gene 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) is associated with the occurrence of congenital heart disease...
Mutations in HOXA1 can lead to diseases such as Bosley–Salih–Alorainy syndrome, involving severe cardiovascular malformations. However, the role of HOXA1 in cardiac morphogenesis remains unclear. hoxa1a is a homologous gene to human HOXA1...
Drinking mothers expose their fetuses to ethanol, which produces birth defects: craniofacial defects, cognitive impairment, sensorimotor disabilities and organ deformities, collectively termed as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). Various congen...
Empagliflozin, an inhibitor of sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (iSGLT2), improves cardiovascular outcomes in patients with and without diabetes and possesses an antiarrhythmic activity. However, the mechanisms of these protective effects have not bee...
Automated high-throughput workflows allow for chemical toxicity testing and drug discovery in zebrafish disease models. Due to its conserved structural and functional properties, the zebrafish pronephros offers a unique model to study renal developme...
Zebrafish is the preferred vertebrate model for high throughput chemical screens to discover modulators of complex biological pathways. We adapted a transgenic zebrafish line, Tg(dusp6:EGFP), which reports on fibroblast growth factor (Fgf)/Ras/Mapk a...
The widespread presence of polystyrene microplastics (PS-MPs) and agricultural pollutants such as avermectin (AVM) in aquatic environments poses a significant threat to aquatic organisms. However, the combined toxic effect of PS-MPs and AVM on cardia...
Acute heart failure (AHF) commonly arises from decompensated chronic heart failure or sudden structural and functional breakdown causing a decrease in cardiac contractility and consequently fluid accumulation and systemic congestion. Current treatmen...
Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the leading form of cardiovascular disease (CVD), which is the primary cause of mortality worldwide. It is a complex disease with genetic and environmental risk factor contributions. Reports in human and mammalian mod...
Studies over the past two decades have shown heart regeneration in zebrafish to be a dynamic process, choreographed by multiple cell types. In particular, recent work has identified revascularization of the wound to be a sentinel event during heart r...
In the last two decades, the zebrafish has emerged as an important model species for heart regeneration studies. Various approaches to model loss of cardiac myocytes and myocardial infarction in the zebrafish have been devised, and have included rese...
The Alternative Reading Frame (ARF) protein is a tumor suppressor encoded by the Cyclin Dependent Kinase Inhibitor 2A gene in mammals but not lower regenerative vertebrates, and has been previously implicated as a context-sensitive suppressor of rege...
Cardiovascular diseases are a major cause of morbidity and mortality, and there are significant sex differences therein. However, the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. The steroid hormone 17β-estradiol (E2) is thought to play a major...
The asb5 gene, a member of the Asb protein subfamily characterized by six ankyrin repeat domains, is highly conserved and comprises two subtypes, asb5a and asb5b, in zebrafish. Our previous research has demonstrated that a deficiency of the asb5 gene...
This paper reports the feasibility of Nakagami imaging in monitoring the regeneration process of zebrafish hearts in a noninvasive manner. In addition, spectral Doppler waveforms that are typically used to access the diastolic function were measured...
Environmental pollution is a serious problem of the modern world that possesses a major threat to public health. Exposure to environmental pollutants during embryonic development is particularly risky. Although many pollutants have been verified as p...
Background/Objectives. Environmental pollution poses a significant threat to human health, primarily through the degradation of natural ecosystems. Emerging organic contaminants (EOCs), such as pharmaceuticals like amoxicillin, are especially concern...
The heart is the most important muscular organ of the cardiovascular system, which pumps blood and circulates, supplying oxygen and nutrients to peripheral tissues. Zebrafish have been widely explored in cardiotoxicity research. For example, the zebr...
Elastic fibers are extracellular macromolecules that provide resilience and elastic recoil to elastic tissues and organs in vertebrates. They are composed of an elastin core surrounded by a mantle of fibrillin-rich microfibrils and are essentially pr...
The epicardium, a mesothelial layer that envelops vertebrate hearts, has become a therapeutic target in cardiac repair strategies because of its vital role in heart development and cardiac injury response. Epicardial cells serve as a progenitor cell...
The heart plays the vital role of propelling blood to the entire body, which is essential to life. While maintaining heart function is critical, adult mammalian hearts poorly regenerate damaged cardiac tissue upon injury and form scar tissue instead....
Cardiac arrhythmia, or irregular heart rhythm, is associated with morbidity and mortality and is described as one of the most important future public health challenges. Therefore, developing new models of cardiac arrhythmia is critical for understand...
Heart disease is the leading cause of mortality in the U.S. with approximately 610,000 people dying every year. Effective therapies for many cardiac diseases are lacking, largely due to an incomplete understanding of their genetic basis and underlyin...
The heart is the first functional organ in a developing embryo. Cardiac development continues throughout developmental stages while the heart goes through a serious of drastic morphological changes. Previous animal experiments as well as clinical obs...
Zebrafish is a well-established model organism for cardiovascular disease studies in which one of the most popular tasks is to assess cardiac functions from the heart beating echo-videos. However, current techniques are often time-consuming and error...
MicroRNA (miRNA), as a key post-transcriptional regulatory factor, plays a crucial role in embryonic development. The coordination of endoderm cell convergence and cardiac precursor cell (CPC) migration is critical for cardiac tube fusion. Defects in...
Zebrafish embryos and larvae have emerged as an excellent model in cardiovascular research and are amenable to live imaging with genetically encoded biosensors to study cardiac cell behaviours, including calcium dynamics. To monitor calcium ion level...
In zebrafish, the spatiotemporal development of the vascular system is well described due to its stereotypical nature. However, the cellular and molecular mechanisms orchestrating post-embryonic vascular development, the maintenance of vascular homeo...
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