Editor's Summary
2 July 2009
ISL1 progenitors are all heart
Recent studies in mice identified multipotent embryonic ISL1+ (Islet 1 expressing) progenitor cells as capable of contributing to all of the major cell types in the heart. Human cardiogenesis is thought to involve more divergent pathways. Now a diverse set of human fetal ISL1+ cardiovascular progenitor populations with multipotent capability has been identified in the right atrium and outflow tract of the developing human heart. Transgenic and gene-targeting techniques applied to human embryonic stem cell lines show that purified populations of these primordial progenitors are capable of self-renewal and expansion prior to differentiation into the three major cell types in the heart — the cardiomyocytes, smooth muscle and endothelia. This has relevance for the production of human models for cardiovascular disease and potentially for human regenerative medicine.
News: How to fix a broken heart?
Clues about how human hearts form hint at routes to cell-based therapies.
Monya Baker
doi:10.1038/460018a
Letter: Human ISL1 heart progenitors generate diverse multipotent cardiovascular cell lineages
Lei Bu, Xin Jiang, Silvia Martin-Puig, Leslie Caron, Shenjun Zhu, Ying Shao, Drucilla J. Roberts, Paul L. Huang, Ibrahim J. Domian & Kenneth R. Chien
doi:10.1038/nature08191
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (1,026K) | Supplementary information
