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Coronary artery development, one cell at a time

An analysis of gene-expression patterns in single cells provides detailed insights into the developmental processes that lead to maturation of the coronary arteries.
  1. Arndt F. Siekmann

    1. Arndt F. Siekmann is at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine, 48149 Münster, Germany.

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The human heart pumps between about 5 and 20 litres of blood through the body every minute1. To receive enough oxygen to fulfil this tremendous task, heart-muscle cells need their own blood supply. This is provided by specialized blood vessels, including coronary arteries. Defects in these arteries can lead to coronary heart disease and even heart attack2,3. Understanding how coronary arteries form during embryonic development is therefore of great interest, because such knowledge might help in developing strategies to prevent or treat coronary heart disease. In a paper in Nature, Su et al.4 provide a detailed picture of the sequence of events that leads to coronary artery development.

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Nature 559, 335-336 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05463-9

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