Moment of heart's formation captured in images for first time

The moment a heart begins to form has been captured in extraordinary time-lapse images for the first time. The footage reveals cardiac cells in a mouse embryo begin to spontaneously organise themselves into a heart-like shape early in development. Scientists say the technique could provide new insights into congenital heart defects, which affect nearly one in 100 babies. “This is the first time we’ve been able to watch heart cells this closely, for this long, during mammalian development,” said the study’s senior author, Dr Kenzo Ivanovitch of University College London’s Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. “We first had to reliably grow the embryos in a dish over long periods, from a few hours to a few days, and what we found was totally unexpected.” The footage of the developing embryos was captured using a technique called advanced light-sheet microscopy. This allowed scientists to track the embryos as they went through a developmental milestone known as gastrulation, w ... Read full article.