Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
This bizarre looking creature, the Axolotl or Mexican walking fish is renowned for its
ability to grow new limbs and other body parts if they are damaged or severed. What's little
known is that newborn mammals have some of the same abilities. Recent evidence suggests
that babies’ hearts can regenerate tissue that is as good as new. Unfortunately it is
very different for adults. Following a heart attack, the heart can only repair itself with
scar tissue which is not very contractile or effective at pumping blood. Here you can
see a healthy heart and here you can see a heart following a heart attack where the damaged
heart muscle has been replaced with non-contractile scar tissue. Why mammals lose this ability
to regenerate new heart tissue soon after birth is not well understood. My research
seeks to decode the complex genetic circuitries that govern cardiac regeneration. To do this
we are looking at genomic dark matter. It is sometimes known as junk DNA because previously
it was thought to perform little role in the genome. But now we think it might play an
important role in regulating the body's ability to repair itself following injury. 55,000
Australians suffer a heart attack each year. Ultimately we hope to develop a pill that
will trigger the genetic messages to allow a damaged heart to generate new healthy tissue
following a heart attack.