Eduardo Marbán, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, and his team has developed a method to keep heart cells outside the sinoatrial node beating, which is less invasive than fitting electronic pacemakers. The team induced a fatal human heart condition in pigs and injected the pigs' hearts with a virus that had been modified to carry a pig gene, Tbx18, involved in heart development. They found within a day, the injected virus had begun to a display a variety of pacemaking genes and pumping the heart at a normal rate. The team is aware that these effects could be short lived and is conducting further research. The development can prove immensely useful for humans in many ways.
Read more in Nature.
