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Developmental biology

Plumbing the heart

Nature volume 464, pages 498–499 (2010)Cite this article

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Ever since Leonardo da Vinci sketched the heart vessels in his anatomical notebook in the late fifteenth century, the origin of the coronary vasculature has been in question. We might just have come upon the answer.

As the heart grows, there comes a point at which it requires its own arteries and veins to survive. These coronary vessels ensure that blood-borne oxygen and nutrients reach the muscle of the heart-chamber walls as it thickens and expands to accommodate the circulatory needs of the developing embryo. A long-standing question has been where these resident heart vessels' endothelial cells (specialized cells that line the inner wall of vessels) and vascular smooth muscle cells (which make up the vessels' middle layer and offer mechanical support) come from. Red-Horse et al.1 report, on page 549 of this issue, that differentiated cells of an unexpected origin are the source of coronary vessels.

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Figure 1: Coronary-vessel formation during heart development.

References

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  1. Paul Riley is in the Molecular Medicine Unit, UCL Institute of Child Health, London WC1N 1EH, UK. p.riley@ich.ucl.ac.uk ,

    Paul Riley

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Riley, P. Plumbing the heart. Nature 464, 498–499 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/464498a

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