Scientists create ‘map’ of the developing human heart

Details of the investigation are published this Wednesday in the journal Nature, in an article led by scientists at the University of California in San Diego, in the United States, which reveals how cells organize themselves as the heart develops.

Despite the importance of this organ, scientists know little about how exactly its cells are organized, not knowing, for example, how they are spatially coordinated to create complex morphological structures, which are crucial for cardiac function.

This complete cellular ‘atlas’ advances precisely this knowledge and reveals how the different types of cardiac cells interact and organize themselves into complex structures essential for the functioning of the heart, the Efe agency reported today.

If these muscular structures of this organ do not form correctly, congenital heart disease, the most common birth defect, can occur, and several heart diseases can also develop in adulthood, recall the authors.

To map the heart, researchers, led by Elie Farah, Quan Zhu and Neil Chi, combined RNA sequencing and cutting-edge imaging technology, according to the magazine.

Thanks to these single-cell technologies, they were able to generate an improved list of human heart cell types.

The map revealed the regional distribution of a wide range of cardiac cell subpopulations, revealing how these cells interact during heart development.

The single-cell analysis identified 75 subpopulations that exhibited characteristics that corresponded to their anatomical location and developmental stage, including novel cell subtypes in heart valves.

Furthermore, the authors discovered interactions between specific combinations of cell populations. They observed, for example, interactions between ventricular heart muscle cells, fibroblasts (part of the connective tissue) and endothelial cells (lining of blood vessels), which may play a role in the formation of the ventricular wall.

Specifically, the scientific team used a spatial imaging method called Merfish, which allowed preliminary spatial identification of individual cells.

Together with the technique of single-cell transcriptomics, which allows us to know which genes are expressed in which cells (transcriptome), scientists have achieved an “unprecedented” resolution and depth of understanding of individual cells and where they reside.

The detailed information discovered in this study could help improve understanding of the mechanisms underlying congenital and adult heart disease, and could also guide new cardiac repair strategies, the authors conclude.