Abstract: While the mature heart is a highly morphologically complex structure, it originates during early embryonic development from a relatively simple linear tube. This linear heart tube undergoes a series of morphogenetic events, including cardiac looping and chamber ballooning, to give shape to the maturing heart. At tube stage, the heart consists of two nested tubes – an outer myocardial layer, and an inner layer composed of specialised endothelial cells, the endocardium. These two tissue layers are separated by a layer of cardiac extracellular matrix (ECM), and our lab is interested in how this cardiac ECM could promote heart morphogenesis.
Here, I will first describe how by using live in vivo imaging we have identified a regionalised expansion of the cardiac ECM at early stages of heart tube morphogenesis. I will present our investigations into how ECM asymmetry is regulated, and its functional role in cardiac development. Later, I will also discuss how the major ECM component laminin regulates specific stages of cardiac morphogenesis.
Altogether, our overarching goal is to understand how the cells of the heart interact with each other, and their environment, to allow a simple tissue to undergo the highly regionalised morphological changes that shape the heart.