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Malformations of heart valves are one of the most common serious congenital defects. Heart valves are developed from endocardial cushions of the heart. The endocardial cushion in early heart development consists of two cell layers: an outer myocardial cell layer and an inner endocardial c ...

Assays of angiogenesis in vitro provide insights into vascular development and are useful in studies of agents that modulate blood vessel formation. This chapter describes techniques to induce angiogenesis-like sprouting from aortic and microvascular explants cultured in 3-d ...

The establishment of a blood vessel network is fundamental to embryonic development and plays a critical role in many diseases including coronary heart disease and cancer. Vascular endothelial cells are central players in blood vessel formation and line the inside of the entire blood ves ...

We introduce a whole-mount immunohistochemistry method for analyzing intricate vascular network formation in mouse embryonic tissues. Laser scanning confocal microscopy with multiple labeling allows for robust imaging of blood and lymphatic vessel branching morphogen ...

Visualizing the circulatory pattern in developing embryos becomes an essential technique for the field of cardiovascular biology. In the zebrafish model system, there are currently several techniques available to visualize the circulatory pattern. Microangiography is a sim ...

The chick embryo chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) is an extraembryonic membrane which serves as a gas exchange surface and its function is supported by a dense capillary network. Because of its extensive vascularization and easy accessibility, the CAM has been broadly used to study the morp ...

The study of gene function in developmental biology has been significantly furthered by advances in antisense technology made in the early 2000s. This was achieved, in particular, by the introduction of morpholino (MO) oligonucleotides. The introduction of antisense MO oligonucle ...

Formation of the cardiac outflow tract and great arteries involves complex morphogenetic processes, whose abnormities result in several clinically important diseases. Studies of these developmental processes are therefore important for understanding congenital vasc ...

Zebrafish embryos have been extensively used to study heart development and cardiac function, mainly due to the unique embryology and genetics of this model organism. Since most human heart disease occurs during adulthood, adult zebrafish models of heart disease are being created to dis ...

Congenital heart defects occur in approximately 1% of newborns and are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in infants and children. Many adult cardiac diseases also have developmental basis, such as heart valve malformations, among others. Therefore, dissecting the developmental ...

The authors describe technical details of experimental protocol of gene transfection in isolated rat mesenteric lymphatic vessels (MLVs). Authors also refer to the recent publication in Microcirculation, which provides wide set of experimental evidences obtained from confo ...

Neonatal rat ventricular myocytes (NRVM) and fibroblasts (FBs) serve as in vitro models for studying fundamental mechanisms underlying cardiac pathologies, as well as identifying potential therapeutic targets. Both cell types are relatively easy to culture as monolayers and can be ...

The atomic force microscope (AFM) is a state-of-the-art tool that can analyze and characterize samples on a scale from angstroms to 100 μm by physical interaction between AFM cantilever tip and sample surface. AFM imaging has been used incrementally over last decade in living cells in cardiova ...

Cardiovascular development is a precisely coordinated process at multilevels. It involves cross-talking among numerous signaling transduction pathways to ensure proper cell polarity, migration, proliferation, differentiation, and programmed death. Here, genome-w ...

Murine models are currently the preferred approach for studying the molecular mechanisms of cardiac dysfunction resulting from changes in gene expression. Transgenic and gene-targeting methods can be used to generate mice with altered cardiac size and function, and as a result, in vivo t ...

DNA microarray methodologies have proven to be an indispensable tool for genome-wide transcriptional profiling of organs, tissues, and cells. Here, we present a protocol for the optimized isolation and preparation of RNA from rat microvessels (including arteries, veins, and lympha ...

Over the past decade, an immense amount of biomedical data have become available in the public domain due to the development of ever-more efficient screening tools such as expression microarrays. To fully leverage this important new resource, it has become imperative to develop new methodo ...

Due to its optical clarity and rudimentary heart structure (i.e., single atrium and ventricle), the zebrafish provides an excellent model for studying the genetic, morphological, and functional basis of normal and pathophysiological heart development in vivo. Recent advances in hig ...

The lineages of individual cells of the Xenopus cleavage-stage embryo have been fate-mapped to reveal the subset of blastomeres that are the major and minor precursors of the retina. Using this retina fate map, one can test the commitment of each of these cells to various retinal cell fates by manipul ...

The individual cells of the Xenopus cleavage-stage embryo have been fate mapped, revealing which of these cells contribute to the retina. Using this retina fate map, one can specifically modulate levels of gene expression in retina lineages to determine the function of proteins in various as ...