A new milestone achieved in the treatment of heart diseases by identifying the genes responsible for heart functioning as now a day's heart diseases have become one of the major cause of deaths and disabilities. A new study was revealed by a group of international researchers at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA), Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) and other organizations gave a new perspective on the subject.

The team has conducted their experiment on drosophila (fruit flies) and observed their 7061 genes contributing to various diseases including heart diseases. Surprisingly, researchers managed to identify many genes responsible for heart diseases.

RNAi technology proves beneficial for these investigators to analyze the genes in depth; they found that presence of around 500 genes give heart diseases to flies when they are under stress. They have also examined the genes of mice and found that a protein complex called CCR4-Not plays a substantial role in heart function. Once this protein reduces, complex genes results in heart muscle abnormalities (cardiomyopathies) in both mice and flies.

Co-lead Scientist Josef Penninger, of IMBA mentioned that experimenting flies have tracked various genes responsible for heart diseases which were missed by human genetic researches.

Scientist Rolf Bodmer, Oh. D., director of the development and Aging program at Sanford-Burnham stated that by this study we have found out the genes responsible for heart functioning in humans are same as in flies and now we are looking forward to find out the genes that help the heart to function properly and also prevent heart diseases in humans.

Investigators viewed this study as a first step towards functioning of heart diseases and looking forward to determine more genes responsible for heart health.

The study will be published as a cover story in April 2 issue of "Cell".