Rashmi Priya, Crick/BHF group leader and head of the Organ Morphodynamics Laboratory at the Crick, has received a Wellcome Discovery Grant for over £2m to study how a functional beating heart is formed during development using zebrafish as a model system.

The heart is the first organ to function during development. It beats around 100,000 times a day and pumps around 5 litres of blood throughout the body.

Rashmi's lab studies how the heart forms a complex meshwork of muscular fibres called trabeculae, which increases the efficiency of blood flow and heart contractility.

The heart needs to build these muscular structures at the right time, in the right place and in the right amount to keep beating and functioning. Defects in trabeculae formation can lead to various heart diseases.

The funding will support Rashmi and her team to use zebrafish to understand how these crucial muscular structures are shaped and regulated during development. Zebrafish are a good model system as they share structural and genetic similarities to human hearts, but are transparent, making it possible to see the heart grow in minute detail.

Rashmi’s team will use state-of-art microscopic techniques and genetic tools to examine the formation of trabeculae in real-time in a beating heart, ask how they regulate blood flow dynamics and understand which cellular processes and molecular mechanisms shape these complex structures.

Rashmi said: 

The heart is one of the most efficient pumps by nature. It is an engineering marvel! If we understand how nature has built this sophisticated organ, it will help us understand what goes wrong during birth defects and will potentially improve diagnosis of heart defects.

I am grateful to the Wellcome Trust for this award and excited about getting this research program up and running. I am immensely thankful to my incredible team, whose excellent work has laid the foundation for this grant. I am indebted to my friends and colleagues for their insightful feedback on the proposal, sitting through multiple practice talks and stimulating coffee conversations. Also, sincere thanks to the Grants team for their support.

Studying beating fish hearts in 3D

Watch postdoc Toby Andrews in Rashmi's lab demonstrate the microscope techniques he uses to build 3D videos of beating fish hearts: