High-resolution mapping of sensory fibers at the healthy and post-myocardial infarct whole transgenic hearts.

The sensory nervous system is critical to maintain cardiac function. As opposed to efferent innervation, less is known about cardiac afferents. For this, we mapped the VGLUT2-expressing cardiac afferent fibers of spinal and vagal origin by using the VGLUT2::tdTomato double transgenic mouse as an approach to visualize the whole hearts both at the dorsal and ventral sides.

Anatomical characterization of vagal nodose afferent innervation and ending morphologies at the murine heart using a transgenic approach.

Heart is an extensively innervated organ and its function is strictly coordinated by autonomic neural circuits. After pathological events such as myocardial infarction (MI), cardiac nerves undergo a structural and functional remodeling contributing to cardiac dysfunction. Although the efferent component of the cardiac nerves has been well described, sensory innervation of the heart has not been defined in detail.

Experimental data of labeling the heart and cardiac cultures with a retrograde tracer and .

Retrograde dyes are often used in basic research to investigate neuronal innervations of an organ. This article describes the experimental data on the application of retrograde dyes on the mouse heart  and on the cardiac or neuronal cultures  By providing this information, cardiac or inneinnervations can be evaluated . Therefore, unknown cellular and molecular mechanisms and systemic interactions in the body can be investigated.