Talk:Cardiovascular System - Coronary Circulation Development

2010

Coronary arteries form by developmental reprogramming of venous cells

Nature. 2010 Mar 25;464(7288):549-53.

Red-Horse K, Ueno H, Weissman IL, Krasnow MA.

Department of Biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford, California 94305-5307, USA. Comment in:

Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol. 2010 May;11(5):312. Nature. 2010 Mar 25;464(7288):498-9. Abstract Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. Determining the coronary artery developmental program could aid understanding of the disease and lead to new treatments, but many aspects of the process, including their developmental origin, remain obscure. Here we show, using histological and clonal analysis in mice and cardiac organ culture, that coronary vessels arise from angiogenic sprouts of the sinus venosus-the vein that returns blood to the embryonic heart. Sprouting venous endothelial cells dedifferentiate as they migrate over and invade the myocardium. Invading cells differentiate into arteries and capillaries; cells on the surface redifferentiate into veins. These results show that some differentiated venous cells retain developmental plasticity, and indicate that position-specific cardiac signals trigger their dedifferentiation and conversion into coronary arteries, capillaries and veins. Understanding this new reprogramming process and identifying the endogenous signals should suggest more natural ways of engineering coronary bypass grafts and revascularizing the heart.

PMID: 20336138