Riley Heart Center Symposium on Cardiac Development 2009: Transcriptional Unification of Heart Morphogenesis

Excerpt

Congenital heart defects are the most common birth defect in humans, present in approximately 1% of all live births and up to 10% of stillbirths [3, 6]. Heart defects impact both children and adults. However, in contrast to the depth of literature on heart failure in the adult [7, 9], less is known about causes in the young [5]. The origins of heart failure in newborns are linked to malformations present before birth or acquired postnatally (Fig. 1). Congenital malformations are due primarily to aberrant gene expression, which ultimately leads to poor cardiac output both in utero and after birth. For cardiogenesis to proceed normally, evolutionary conserved transcription factors drive a feed-forward cascade in tandem with cell-signaling morphogens to establish the specification, patterning, differentiation, and, ultimately, function of the cardiovascular system [1, 8]. However, there is still much to understand about the etiology [2, 10, 11], diagnosis, repair [4], and prevention of congenital heart defects, hence highlighting the need for continuous collaboration between both basic and clinical research scientists. It is for this reason that the Riley Heart Research Symposium was first organized in 2008.

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