A team of researchers from the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona (Spain) has discovered a protein, called Mel18, responsible for regulating the development of the cardiac muscle, our heart. The study has been published in the journal Cell Stem Cell .
Epigeneticists have found in this organ that we cannot live without, " a unique genetic switch that seems to guide stem cells to transform into specialized cells of heart muscle : it is the protein that makes it beat", explains Luciano Di Croce, study leader.
Thus, certain failures in the production of the Mel18 protein in early cardiac cells could be implicated in heart malformations. This incredible finding will help to reveal the causes that cause cardiac malformations in congenital diseases of the most hard-working organ of our body and also to discover new methods to control stem cells in the laboratory to grow “cell repair kits” to help patients with the heart. damaged.
And it is that the Mel18 protein regulates a part of the cellular machinery that activates temporary silencers on the DNA in cells still in development, that is, it can silence certain genes : “This protein is normally active in a group of embryonic stem cells of the mesoderm, a layer of the embryo that is transformed into all the muscle cells and red blood cells of the body ”, explains Di Croce.
