Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Heart disease is a major cause of death and disability in developed nations; it accounts for one quarter of all deaths in Canada. Affecting 1 in 70 Canadians, congenital heart defects are the most common birth defects, severely reducing life quality and expectancy. Recent research has discovered a novel cell population, termed the second heart field (SHF), that contributes to heart development. Flawed SHF development has been linked to congenital heart defects. Furthermore, the SHF may be the source of adult heart stem cells. My research aims to use the zebrafish to observe and study the SHF in the live embryo and to understand its role in heart disease and regeneration. The zebrafish is the ideal vertebrate model organism to study the SHF and the heart in the live embryo. The quickly developing transparent embryo allows for the continual live imaging of the heart. An adult zebrafish can produce 1000s of embryos every week, allowing for large-scale mutagenic studies to find heart mutants. Well-established methodologies in transplantation, transgenics, gene knockdown, and microscopy allow for multiple approaches in studying the SHF's role in heart development. I have published evidence that the zebrafish possesses a SHF that contributes cells to the growing heart. I am creating transgenic zebrafish lines to further study SHF development in the live zebrafish embryo. These transgenic lines express a fluorescent protein in the heart, enabling me to determine when and where SHF cells are added to the heart. I will investigate several zebrafish heart mutants in order to establish and study links between the SHF and heart disease. Lastly, I will destroy zebrafish heart cells and study if and how the SHF contributes to the known regenerative potential of the zebrafish heart. Understanding the role of the SHF in heart development will lead to a better understanding of heart disease and offer new approaches for heart regenerative medicine.