Taiwan University develops heart-emitting gene transfer fish

Taiwan’s National Taiwan University’s School of Life Sciences recently announced that it has developed genes that only transmit a strong green fluorescence to the heart of zebrafish, which researchers can use to track heart cell changes and identify new genes and functions related to heart development.
According to reports, researchers have identified promoters with highly specific genes for the eyes, heart, and muscles, linked to promoters using jellyfish green fluorescent protein genes, and cloned into fertilized eggs of zebrafish. Breed, breed a gene transfer zebrafish.
Since the zebrafish embryos are transparent, the performance characteristics of the transgenic genes can be stably inherited. Researchers say that gene transfer to zebrafish is the best experimental material for studying embryonic development. Transgenic zebrafish can not only track the growth of heart cells, but can also be used for the collection of green cells to further analyze the performance or suppress the expression of gene groups, thereby finding new genes and functions related to heart development.
During the research and development process, the researchers removed the gene for the cardiac myosin C-type protein from the transgenic fish. The result was that the atrial and ventricular beats were different, similar to human arrhythmia. It is the first case in the world to witness live changes in the heartbeat. In addition, they also removed a small piece of the fish's heart during the experiment, resulting in the regeneration of a green fluorescent heart from the original defective part, rather than regeneration from the original gene that developed into the heart, indicating that there are ways of organ regeneration. The researchers said that this mechanism can study how to induce the development of one's own stem cells into another heart and that transplant rejection does not occur.