[Developmental genes and heart disease]

The past three years can be considered in cardiology as critical for understanding the relevance of developmental genes in the adult cardiac physiology. Also, for the first time, endogenous control of programmed cell death has been demonstrated to mark the transition between normal adaptation and cardiac hypertrophy. Most of this work has been based on previous analysis using molecular markers of cardiac determination and differentiation, work that has served a double aim: First, the determination of the cellular process that contribute to the specification of the working heart and secondly, the characterization of key regulatory factors in cardiogenesis. These studies in conjunction with the recent availability of single gene mutation in transgenic mice have furnished a new perspective in the nature of cardiac defects either in shape or function. Here we review some of the key factors in cardiac morphogenesis from the perspective of the analysis of gene mutation.