How to grow a heart By Maia Roman Year 10
What if I told you that there was a way
The blind form of this incredible fish is also
you could regrow your own heart if it got
science. Roughly 1.5 million years ago, some
damaged?
extremely important for future groundbreaking
Mexican river tetras, living in the Northern I am actually going to talk about a
Mexican rivers, got washed into caves by
certain species of fish that can already do this
floodwaters and became trapped there. So what
themselves.
did they do? They adapted. These tetras lost the Astyanax
pigmentation in their skin and they lost their
Mexicanus and its river dwelling form is able to
eyesight due to the permanent darkness that
self heal its heart tissue. When compared to its
surrounded them. Some had only partial
adaptation, the blind, cave dwelling Mexican
eyesight and others went completely blind or
tetra which is unable to self heal its heart tissue,
even without eyes. They have even adapted to
studies showed that two genes, known as Irrc10
have a better sense of smell via taste buds all
and caveolin, were much more active in the
over their heads, which allows them to find food
river fish following heart injury. Scientists then
more easily. These cave dwelling tetras are able
experimented on Zebrafish, a different species
to store four times more energy than the river
with healing abilities, and turned off the Irrc10
dwelling tetras, and they store it in the form of
gene. They found that without this particular
fat. This adaptation enables the fish to deal with
gene, the Zebrafish was unable to fully repair its
inconsistent food supplies of algae in the cave
heart without scarring. Scar tissue prevents the
more efficiently. Sources say that because of
heart from functioning properly because it
such a “sudden environmental change, their
reduces its ability to pump blood. Irrc10 and
phenotypic (characteristic) evolution occurred
Caveolin are present in humans, and Irrc10 is
more rapidly within about 20 000 years and is
actually related to a medical condition known
probably still ongoing.” Although 20 000 years
as dilated cardiomyopathy.
doesn’t seem very fast to us, when compared to
The
species
of
fish
is
called
could
other animals such as the giraffe, which
seriously benefit the treatment of people with
supposedly didn’t fully evolve to be truly long
heart conditions. At the moment the only
necked until 7.5 million years ago, that is a very
treatment is a heart transplant which does not
fast adaptation.
Further
research
into
these
genes
have guaranteed success because the body could easily reject it and attack the new heart
Scientists are also very interested in this
cells.
adaptation of the fish because it could lead to a
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