September 25, 2017
Cosmos Editorial
Regrowing cells in a zebrafish heart.
Credit: Jingli Cao, Duke University
By taking videos of a tiny beating zebrafish heart as it reconstructs its covering in a petri dish, Jingli Cao and colleagues at Duke University have captured unexpected dynamics of cells involved in tissue regeneration.
They found that the depleted heart tissue regenerates itself in a wave, led by a front of fast-moving, supersized cells and trailed by smaller cells that multiply to produce others.
The image above shows the large cells that contain multiple nuclei per cell (magenta). These cells are under more mechanical tension (aqua streaks) than trailing cells, which divide to produce cells with one nucleus each.
The research is published in Developmental Cell.
