Alex Akerberg places a specimen gently onto the operating table. The subject has been under for some time, and won’t feel anything as he begins his work. Akerberg grabs his instrument and carefully slices through skin and muscle.
The chest cavity is now open.  It’s time for the real experiment to begin. A simple cut is all it takes to remove precisely 20 percent of the subject’s heart. No more, no less.
The organism would have died almost immediately if it were human. But the Zebrafish has a special ability that allows it to regenerate almost any part of its body. Once the heart has been sliced, the blood clots instantly.  The Zebrafish spends the next few weeks loafing around. After a month, the heart is completely healed and the fish is back to full health.
From bones to fins, this organism is one of the few that can completely heal without leaving any scar tissue. A human heart could repair itself if damaged, but would leave behind scare tissue that would potentially cause health problems, Akerberg said.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could somehow transfer the zebrafish’s ability into humans? Heart diseases would be a thing of the past. But there’s only one problem, we have no idea how the regeneration works. The answer to this mystery is what this UO student has decided to uncover.
“If you want to cure heart disease, then what better mechanism to study than to find someone who can already do it,” Akerberg said.
As Ph.D student at the University of Oregon, Akerberg studies heart regeneration and its development at the Stankunas Lab. He is trying to figure out which genes control the heart developmental process and regulate the zebrafishes’ regeneration.
Unlike mammals, the zebrafish lays eggs where the embryos are seen through, explained Akerberg. This allows for researchers to observe how the heart develops. In addition, scientists are able to put a gene found in jellyfish into the zebrafish that makes it so that the heart glows.  This makes it even easier to observe.
“Who wouldn’t want to chop off a heart and watch it re-grow, especially if it’s florescent,” Akerberg said.
Akerberg has been looking into the gene KDM6BB. He theorizes that it could regulate other genes which instigate the regeneration process.
“I think it’s a master regulator of the regeneration process,” Akerberg said.
In order to understand what a gene does, scientists take it out and compare organisms that have the gene to organisms that do not.
Akerberg’s research has shown some indication that the KDM6BB plays a part in heart development in baby zebrafish. His next step is to see how it affects adult zebrafish.
The lab is within the Institute of Molecular Biology and focuses on the study on how cells develop and regenerate, Kryn Stankunas, an associate professor at the UO, said. While no one knows exactly why zebrafish can regenerate, the lab has a hypothesis.
“We think zebra fish are able to regenerate because they can reactivate developmental programs,” Stankunas said.
The lab’s hypothesis goes as so: zebrafish are able to use genes that encode multiple signals that communicate and direct regeneration. They begin to build new cells just like when they first formed, Stankunas explained. While it is unknown which genes play a part in this, Akerberg is attempting to discover the cause.
The majority of the lab focuses on experiments with mice, including Akerberg’s wife who also works at the lab. A few students are studying zebrafish fin regeneration with Akerberg being the only one to study the heart of the problem, literally, Stankunas explained.
The discovery that could end heart diseases may be days or decades away. Akerberg hopes that he gets to be the one who makes the discovery of a lifetime.
“Think what that would do for human heart attacks if we could learn how zebrafish do it and knew how to get humans to do the same,” said John Poslethwait, a UO Professor who received a $2.5 grant to conduct research with zebrafish.
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