The development of the human heart

The development of the human heart

Introduction

The purpose of this study is to expand the boundaries of our knowledge by exploring some relevant information relating to the development of human heart. Heart is the central organ of the circulatory system that is located in the chest in the middle mediastinum, the inside of the pericardium. The heart is the central organ of the circulatory behaving like a suction pump and impeller. The tubes that come from the heart are arteries to the tissues where they end up causing arterial capillaries. Veins are vessels that return blood to the heart from the venous capillaries. They are independent arteries and veins which carry blood from the artery carrying blood exists "venous" and vice versa. In the body there are two blood circuits. The first is the greater or systemic circulation, where the aorta distributes blood to all organs and tissues and whose main function are nutrition. The other circuit is what we are talking about less than or pulmonary circulation, serving the hematoxis (gaseous exchange) and which is involved in the pulmonary artery. The theory of structure, function and diseases of the heart is the Cardiology. The heart is one of the first applied organs during embryonic development (Olson, 2006). In the next section, the author will discuss some important elements related to the development of human heart.

Discussion

The Development of Human Heart

The development of heart is a multifaceted process that consists of varied genes and regulatory mechanisms (Katz, 2002). The following figure represents the process of human heart development.

The heart's origins can be traced back to events between the second and third weeks of the human embryo's life, as the neural tube takes shape. At that point the embryo is stretching to become a long, bumpy oval. Seen in cross-section, the ectoderm is a bit like one bag containing another bag (the mesoderm); this tissue, in turn, holds the endoderm and the hollow space that will become the gut. The mesoderm thickens a bit and opens in the middle, like a slowly inflating air mattress. Two of these mats develop on the sides of the notochord.

The space in between will soon become a tube, formed from mesoderm tissue growing inward from right and left. Before that occurs, a bit of underlying tissue from the endoderm is squeezed up through the space between the mesoderm and the notochord. To go back to the air mattress analogy, if the two mattresses are lying on a carpet (the endoderm) and are pushed together, the carpet might wrinkle between them, making a bulge. In the organism this bit of tissue will be pinched off. The top of the bulge will develop into the foregut, which will later become the respiratory system, the stomach, and several other organs.

Now the two mats need to grow together. The mesoderm pushes in from the two sides. It does not completely fill the gap; a hollow space is left in the middle, creating the tube in ...