{"id":240041,"date":"2026-06-30T22:11:50","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T03:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/molecular-mechanics-behind-heart-cell-restructuring-revealed"},"modified":"2026-06-30T22:11:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T03:11:50","slug":"molecular-mechanics-behind-heart-cell-restructuring-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/molecular-mechanics-behind-heart-cell-restructuring-revealed","title":{"rendered":"Molecular mechanics behind heart cell restructuring revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/molecular-mechanics-behind-heart-cell-restructuring-revealed2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Microtubules, part of heart muscle cells\u2019 internal \u201cskeleton,\u201d help determine how the heart changes shape under stress, and a common signaling pathway called the ERK pathway acts as a key controller of where the building materials for these cells\u2019 growth are delivered inside them, a pair of new studies show. These findings, from a team at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, point to possible new ways to address harmful heart remodeling that can be linked to heart failure.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe molecular decision behind how a heart cell, and by extension the heart, changes in size and shape has been a mystery, even though we\u2019ve known that heart cells do change in length and width over a person\u2019s life in response to different conditions,\u201d said the studies\u2019 senior author Benjamin Prosser, Ph.D., a professor of Physiology.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut now that we know what is doing the work and what guides it, that opens the door to targeting these mechanisms and correcting abnormal growth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Microtubules, part of heart muscle cells\u2019 internal \u201cskeleton,\u201d help determine how the heart changes shape under stress, and a common signaling pathway called the ERK pathway acts as a key controller of where the building materials for these cells\u2019 growth are delivered inside them, a pair of new studies show. These findings, from a team [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}