CAN ZEBRAFISH HOLD THE CLUE TO MUSCLE REPAIR IN HUMANS?
Tuesday 13 February 2007 The humble Zebrafish, normally found in the waters of India or in your local aquarium, could hold the key to understanding how muscle can be regenerated in humans suffering muscle degeneration. Diseases of the skeletal muscles – the muscles that move your arms and legs – are a major cause of premature death and disability. Also called myopathies or dystrophies, the commonest type of these diseases, for example, affects young boys, with death due to respiratory or heart failure commonly occurring in the 2nd or 3rd decades of life. Determining how our muscles develop, grow and repair themselves (that is regenerate) after an injury is, thus, critical to understanding and, hopefully in the future, treating these diseases. Fish may be on a lower rung than humans on the evolutionary tree, but the Zebrafish Laboratory at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute has found new evidence that Zebrafish can repair damaged muscle more effectively than humans. The key dif
Tuesday 13 February 2007 The humble Zebrafish, normally found in the waters of India or in your local aquarium, could hold the key to understanding how muscle can be regenerated in humans suffering muscle degeneration. Diseases of the skeletal muscles – the muscles that move your arms and legs – are a major cause of premature death and disability. Also called myopathies or dystrophies, the commonest type of these diseases, for example, affects young boys, with death due to respiratory or heart failure commonly occurring in the 2nd or 3rd decades of life. Determining how our muscles develop, grow and repair themselves (that is regenerate) after an injury is, thus, critical to understanding and, hopefully in the future, treating these diseases. Fish may be on a lower rung than humans on the evolutionary tree, but the Zebrafish Laboratory at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute has found new evidence that Zebrafish can repair damaged muscle more effectively than humans. The key dif
