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Nikon would like to congratulate Llewelyn Roderick and his team at Babraham Institute for successfully creating a 3D reconstruction of a section through a rat heart using a Nikon A1 Confocal and NIS-Elements 3D Deconvolution.

UK researchers have recently discovered how signalling processes within the heart can trigger the development of enlarged heart cells, a process called hypertrophy.

While this may sound romantic, and is necessary for developmental growth, hypertrophy often leads to cardiac failure, which accounts for 25% deaths in the UK.

The image shown above, a 3D reconstruction of a section through a rat heart, is from the BBSRC-funded Babraham Institute, a world-leading centre for studying the basic biology of signalling processes and (epi)genome regulation, supporting BBSRC’s mission to drive advances in bioscience for health and improved quality of life.

Understanding how these changes occur in the heart, in response to disease and ageing, may lead to new approaches to maintain a healthy heart and to treat heart disease, which costs the economy about £9Bn annually.