Newswise | Fruit Flies May Pave Way to New Treatments for Age-related Heart Disease

Newswise Fruit Flies May Pave Way to New Treatments for Age-related Heart Disease: "The tiny Drosophila fruit fly may pave the way to new methods for studying and finding treatments for heart disease, the leading cause of death in industrialized countries, according to a collaborative study by the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, UC San Diego (UCSD) and the University of Michigan.
The study reports that mutations in a molecular channel found in heart muscle cell membranes caused arrhythmias similar to those that are found in humans, suggesting that understanding how this channel’s activity is controlled in the cell could lead to new heart disease treatments. "

The involved methods described in this report are amazing. We can watch a fly's heart functionning. From that, we can see how genetic changes in the human heart can affect heat disease.