Mechanotransduction in Heart Development

The mechanical forces that the cells of an organism are subject to are an essential epigenetic factor impacting on their behavior. Heart development is a striking example of a process greatly influenced by mechanical forces. The heart develops from a simple tube in the early embryo into a structurally complex chambered heart with valves and great vessels. Already at the early stages of development, the heart tube starts to function and thus to produce mechanical forces generated by contractions and blood flow. As a consequence, the cells of the developing heart are continuously subject to dynamic shear stress, pressure, and stretch, which change as the developing heart grows and structurally transforms. Through mechanotransduction, the mechanical signals are converted to chemical or electrical signals and transcriptional responses in the cardiac cells that in turn steer the process of heart development. Here we discuss relatively well-studied examples of heart developmental processes that rely on transduction of the dynamic mechanical signals produced by heart function, heart looping and chamber expansion, the formation of the trabeculae, the formation of the valves, and the formation of the outflow vessels.