Live imaging of heart tube development in mouse reveals alternating phases of cardiac differentiation and morphogenesis
Abstract
During vertebrate heart development two progenitor populations, first and second heart fields (FHF, SHF), sequentially contribute to longitudinal subdivisions of the heart tube (HT), with the FHF contributing the left ventricle and part of the atria, and the SHF the rest of the heart. Here we study the dynamics of cardiac differentiation and morphogenesis by tracking individual cells in live analysis of mouse embryos. We report that during an initial phase, FHF precursors differentiate rapidly to form a cardiac crescent, while limited morphogenesis takes place. In a second phase, no differentiation occurs while extensive morphogenesis, including splanchnic mesoderm sliding over the endoderm, results in HT formation. In a third phase, cardiac precursor differentiation resumes and contributes to SHF-derived regions and the dorsal closure of the HT. These results reveal tissue-level coordination between morphogenesis and differentiation during HT formation and provide a new framework to understand heart development.
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Author details
Funding
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (BFU2015-71519-P)
- Miguel Torres
Instituto de Salud Carlos III (RD16/0011/0019)
- Miguel Torres
European Molecular Biology Organization (ATL1275-2014)
- Kenzo Ivanovitch
Human Frontier Science Program (LT000609/2015)
- Kenzo Ivanovitch
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (BFU2015-70193-REDT)
- Miguel Torres
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (SEV-2015-0505)
- Miguel Torres
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All animal procedures were approved by the CNIC Animal Experimentation Ethics Committee, by the Community of Madrid (Ref. PROEX 220/15) and conformed to EU Directive 2010/63EU and Recommendation 2007/526/EC regarding the protection of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes, enforced in Spanish law under Real Decreto 1201/2005.
Copyright
© 2017, Ivanovitch et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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