Cardiac c-Kit Biology Revealed by Inducible Transgenesis

Cellular Biology Cardiomyogenesis in the Developing Heart Is Regulated by C-Kit–Positive Cardiac Stem Cells

c-kit+ Cardiac Stem Cells

One of the lingering controversies in the field of cardiac regenerative medicine has been around the origin of c-kit cardiac stem cells in the heart and their contribution toward cardiac homeostasis. A recent study reports that a subpopulation of c-kit cardiac progenitors emerges from the cardiac neural crest (CNC) with the capacity to give rise to cardiomyocytes. Contribution of CNC-derived c-...

Transgenesis in C. elegans.

The ability to manipulate the genome of organisms at will is perhaps the single most useful ability for the study of biological systems. Techniques for the generation of transgenics in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans became available in the late 1980s. Since then, improvements to the original approach have been made to address specific limitations with transgene expression, expand on the re...

Reengineering inducible cardiac-specific transgenesis with an attenuated myosin heavy chain promoter.

Despite the advantages of reversibly altering cardiac transgene expression, the number of successful studies with inducible cardiac-specific transgene expression remains limited. The utility of the current system is hampered by the large number of lines needed before a nonleaky inducible line is isolated and by the use of a heterologous virus-based minimal promoter in the responder line. We dev...

Sustained preconditioning induced by cardiac transgenesis with the tetracycline transactivator.

Preconditioning protocols that protect the heart from ischemic injury may aid in the development of new therapies. However, the temporal window of cardioprotection is limited to a few days after the preconditioning stimulus. Here we report a sustained cardioprotected phenotype in mice expressing a tetracycline transactivator (tTA) transcription factor under the control of the alpha-myosin heavy...