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Science 5 May 2006:
Vol. 312. no. 5774, pp. 751 - 753
DOI: 10.1126/science.1123775
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Reports

The Embryonic Vertebrate Heart Tube Is a Dynamic Suction Pump

Arian S. Forouhar,1 Michael Liebling,2 Anna Hickerson,1 Abbas Nasiraei-Moghaddam,1 Huai-Jen Tsai,4 Jay R. Hove,5 Scott E. Fraser,1,2 Mary E. Dickinson,2,6 Morteza Gharib1,3*

The embryonic vertebrate heart begins pumping blood long before the development of discernable chambers and valves. At these early stages, the heart tube has been described as a peristaltic pump. Recent advances in confocal laser scanning microscopy and four-dimensional visualization have warranted another look at early cardiac structure and function. We examined the movement of cells in the embryonic zebrafish heart tube and the flow of blood through the heart and obtained results that contradict peristalsis as a pumping mechanism in the embryonic heart. We propose a more likely explanation of early cardiac dynamics in which the pumping action results from suction due to elastic wave propagation in the heart tube.

1 Option in Bioengineering, Beckman Institute, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
2 Biological Imaging Center, Beckman Institute, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
3 Graduate Aeronautical Laboratories, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
4 Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology, National Taiwan University, Taiwan.
5 Genome Research Institute, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA.
6 Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mgharib{at}caltech.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)