Project description:Among mammals, injury to the heart typically results in scar formation and diminished cardiovascular function. In contrast, some teleost fish and salamanders can replace damaged heart tissue and restore overall function. For most species, however, less is known. Here, we investigate cardiac self-repair in an amniote capable of multi-tissue regeneration, the leopard gecko (Eublepharis macularius). To create a heart lesion, we placed a liquid nitrogen-cooled metal probe directly onto the ventricle. The result was a cryoinjury to ~20% of the ventricle. Cardiac cryoinjury induced localized cardiac cell death, followed by an increase in cell proliferation by injury-adjacent cardiomyocytes and non-cardiomyocytes. By 100 days, the histology of the ventricular myocardium was near-completely restored. Echocardiography and invasive hemodynamic monitoring demonstrated that global cardiac function is restored within this timeframe, verifying functional replacement of the myocardium. To explore the molecular basis, we performed bulk RNA sequencing of the injury-adjacent tissue and found that many of the molecular mechanisms common to other cardiac regenerating species, including genes involved in heart development, glycolysis, and extracellular matrix deposition, are also conserved in geckos. Taken together, this work expands the comparative framework of heart regeneration to include reptiles and indicates that the ability to replace missing or damaged cardiomyocytes is shared across more than 350 million years of evolution.
Project description:Various species of teleost fish, amphibians, and neonatal mammals can regenerate their hearts following injury. Certain processes, including extracellular matrix remodelling, a switch from oxidative to glycolytic metabolism and sarcomere disorganization are believed to be critical to heart regeneration. However, whether all regenerating species follow the same pathway to regeneration is not known. Here, we use mass-spectrometry based proteomics to characterize the cellular processes that occur in the heart of a reptile, the leopard gecko (Eublepharis macularius) following injury. The hearts were damaged using a cryoprobe and wound sites were sampled at 3-, 14-, 30- and 100-days post injury (dpi). The proteomes of these were compared to those from sham operated geckos. Overall, 1116 proteins were identified in the wound sites and 579 were differentially expressed across at least two time points. This includes an increase in agrin at 14-dpi, a protein thought to be required for cardiomyocyte proliferation and heart regeneration. Interaction network analysis indicates that there is enrichment of Gene Ontology (GO) terms related to transcription and translation by 14-dpi, but a concurrent decrease in GO terms related to oxidative and glycolytic metabolism, and sarcomere organization. Importantly, GO terms related to the structure and function of mitochondria as well as sarcomere organization were enriched at 100-dpi compared to 3-dpi, and 14-dpi. There were no GO terms identified as differing between sham and 100 dpi hearts, suggesting full regeneration. This work indicates that the gecko heart can regenerate and that this involves reorganization of cellular pathways associated with mitosis, energy production and contractile function.