Scientists claim to observe myocardial regeneration in newborn mice. Then they reported that after a piece of the small heart of the newborn mouse was cut, the heart muscle would regenerate. This is a self-repair. The report is moving because no other mammals have observed this kind of myocardial regeneration.
This also caused some controversy, because some people were unable to replicate these experiments, while others were able to replicate them successfully. In this new study, these researchers not only replicated these results, but they also better understood the inconsistencies in this replication process.
The experiments conducted by these researchers are very simple. They cut off a few healthy newborn mice and used a non-lethal procedure to remove part of the heart muscle. This process occurs 4-9 days after the mouse is born. The mice were then sutured and cured within 3 weeks. Three weeks later, they cut them open again to see if the heart muscle had regenerated. Reporting results is not easy. They report that mice that undergo myocardial resection on the first day of life rarely scar. The myocardium of all other newborn mice was cleared and the scars were clear. I thought that the heart muscle was regenerated in the mice that had the heart muscle removed on the first day after birth, but it has not yet been confirmed. They can safely say that the hearts of these mice are scarred, and their size and weight are the same as control mice that have not undergone cardiotomy.
In order to clarify the reasons for these differences between the first day of newborn mice and all other newborn mice, these researchers hinted at gene expression related to muscle stiffness in developing mice. I studied these factors. They found that the muscles of newborn mice older than one day were much stiffer. Then, give these newborn mice a drug to prevent this higher muscle stiffness, and then repeat these first experiments. They report that doing so can almost eliminate the wounds of these mice.