The people behind the papers – Dennis de Bakker, Mara Bouwman and Jeroen Bakkers

Unlike mammals, adult zebrafish are capable of regenerating their hearts without scarring after injury – a process that has great therapeutic potential. A new paper in Development investigates the role of Prxx1b, a transcription factor that is expressed in epicardial heart tissue after injury, to understand its role in the scar-free regeneration of the adult zebrafish heart. To hear more about the study, we caught up with joint first authors, Dennis De Bakker and Mara Bouwman, and the corresponding author, Jeroen Bakkers, the group leader at the Hubrecht Institute and professor of Molecular Cardiogenetics at the University Medical Center in Utrecht, The Netherlands.