The people behind the papers – Ding Li and Jianbo Wang

Abstract

ABSTRACT Heart development in mammals is a beautifully complex process. Patterning, proliferation and differentiation are all coordinated with cell movements and tissue morphogenesis (for instance elongation, fusion, folding, looping). However, our knowledge of the molecular regulators of heart development currently outstrips what we know about the morphogenetic processes that create the functional structure. A new paper in Development seeks to understand tissue-level morphogenesis – and its molecular control – in the mouse secondary heart field. We caught up with first author Ding Li and his postdoctoral advisor Jianbo Wang, Associate Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, to find out more about the paper.