OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Whereas the human heart has no inherent ability to regenerate cardiac muscle after myocardial infarction, certain fish efficiently repair their hearts. Astyanax mexicanus, a close relative of the zebrafish, is a single fish species comprising cave-dwelling and surface river populations. Remarkably, while surface fish regenerate their heart after injury, cavefish cannot and form a permanent fibrotic scar, similar to humans. The difference in heart regeneration capacity within one species makes Astyanax mexicanus a unique and powerful model to link the ability for heart regeneration directly to the genome using Quantitative Trait Loci analysis. This allows us to study the most fundamental molecular mechanisms that are prerequisite to creating a cellular environment favouring heart regeneration over scarring. Preliminary results indicate that we will be able link the ability for heart regeneration directly to a small number of loci containing a limited number of genes.
