Tiny controllers of heart development

Investigating a microRNA-Ets1 network during endocardial cushion development (Mr Johannes Wittig)  

Supervised by Professor Andrea Munsterberg, the PhD student on this project is working out how microRNAs are involved in heart development. Ribonucleic acid, or RNA, is present in all living cells and acts as a messenger, carrying instructions from DNA to make proteins. MicroRNAs are short RNAs that do not code proteins, but instead control what proteins are made. MicroRNAs affect many biological processes and are an important control mechanism in heart development and disease, so they are potential targets for new drugs. We don’t yet fully understand what microRNAs do during the early stages of heart development. Professor Munsterberg’s research team has identified microRNAs in developing hearts of chick embryos, and has developed methods to study microRNAs within the whole embryo. Her PhD student is now using these methods to understand the function of these microRNAs in normal heart development in the chick. She will identify and test the target genes for these microRNAs, and how these genes and microRNAs interact with each other. This research will improve our understanding of the function of microRNAs in heart development, and what can go wrong in congenital heart disease, when babies are born with an abnormal heart. One type of microRNA has been linked with heart valve development, and these tiny molecules may therefore be linked with heart valve abnormalities, a common congenital heart defect.