Unfinished Architecture

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. To study the heart, scientists can convert other (easier to donate) cells into heart cells for research, but they don’t 100% match the cells in our bodies for reasons unknown.

Pictured here is a sheet of these heart cells, where each color is a key player in making the heart beat. The faint grey is the nucleus, the DNA-filled “brain” of each cell. In blue is a-actinin: a scaffold protein that guides the motor proteins to drive the heartbeat. Magenta shows plectin, which is responsible for many functions but not well documented in human heart cells. These experiments reveal how protein structures differ between native and lab-grown origins, offering clues as to how they may have diverged. Before we can hope to use engineered heart cells like these in medicine, we must first understand why proteins like plectin don’t develop as they would in our hearts, paving the way for more accurate and effective heart research.