Zhou Bin's team found that the proliferation activity of cardiomyocytes has regional characteristics

The cardiomyocytes in the adult mammalian heart are renewed at a very low rate, so they cannot regenerate in time after heart injury, causing irreversible damage to the heart.

Based on the above-mentioned problems, researchers in Zhou Bin's group used lineage tracing technology to establish a cell proliferation technology-ProTracer, which can specifically track the proliferation of cardiomyocytes in the body

Researchers used ProTracer to study the state of cardiomyocytes entering the cell cycle in adult mouse hearts at homeostasis and after damage repair

The researchers first used the broad-spectrum ProTracer (ProTracer can be activated in all types of cells) to detect the proliferation of cardiomyocytes in the adult heart.

ProTracer records the proliferation of cells in mice by tracking the activity of Ki67 in cells, but Ki67 is also expressed in those cells that have only completed DNA replication or nuclear division but not complete cell division.

In summary, the highlight of this research is the use of a newly developed cell proliferation tracing technology-ProTracer, to discover the position specificity of cardiomyocyte proliferation after adulthood, which provides new research tools for the field of myocardial proliferation research, and also for the heart The field of restoration and regeneration provides new research ideas

Doctoral students Liu Xiuxiu, Pu Wenjuan and He Lingjuan (now West Lake University) of the Center of Molecular Cell Excellence are the co-first authors of the paper.

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　　Figure: The researchers used the cardiomyocyte-specific ProTracer technology to find that the cardiomyocytes (marked with green fluorescence in the picture) that enter the cell cycle of the adult heart are position-specific, and they are concentrated in the endocardial muscles surrounding the left ventricle