EVOLUTIONARY DEVELOPMENT OF THE HEART

This text on evolutionary heart development through the eons of terrestrial life evolution has been compiled by two clinical cardiologists, human and veterinary one. The primary motivation was not sheer academic curiosity , but desire to understand embryological (mis) development and (mal) adaptive remodelling of the heart. The full understanding of those intricate processes requires the insight into their evolutionary origins which may have appeared hundreds million years ago in distant and primitive ancestors. Translational medicine, which integrates experimental research with clinical practices, investigates fundamental biological processes with deep evolutionary roots, often reaching to the early eukaryotic cells ("from yeast to man") or even deeper ("from bacteria to man"). Delving into evolutionary past may appear as a daunting task to clinical cardiologists lacking basic knowledge on evolutionary biology.