The role of lncRNA CARMN and its associated miRNAs during scar regression and cardiac repair

During a heart attack (myocardial infarction/MI), blood vessels become blocked in injured heart and cannot supply nutrients and oxygen to heart which leads to severe heart muscle damage. Innate body healing process fail to repair cardiac muscles and unable to replace the damaged muscle of injured heart. In addition, delay in proper medical care and disproportionate prolonged inflammation, results sustained muscle damage, adverse remodeling, defective scar formation, arrhythmia etc. that leads to heart failure. However, recent animal studies have shown that the heart has potential for regeneration following an experimental injury thus opening the possibility of harnessing this as a therapeutic intervention Therefore, studying cardiac repair process in animal models is key in seeking new therapeutic interventions for human MI. Long non coding RNAs (LncRNAs) are important regulator of cellular processes that don’t make any protein themselves but directly or indirectly affect the function or expression of their target genes. In this project, we aim to elucidate whether lncRNA CARMN is obligatory for cardiac muscle repair, new cardiac muscle formation and scar regression during cardiac repair and regeneration in zebrafish animal model. Furthermore, we aim to decipher the relevance of lncRNA CARMN molecular function to human myocardial injury.