Fibroblast growth factor receptor is required for in vivo cardiac myocyte proliferation at early embryonic stages of heart development.

In birds and mammals, cardiac myocytes terminate mitotic activity in the neonatal period and regeneration of cardiac muscle does not occur after myocardial injury in adult hearts. Even embryonic myocytes, which actively proliferate in vivo, quickly lose mitotic activity when placed in cell culture. Several growth factors, including fibroblast growth factor (FGF), have been documented in embryonic hearts and some have been shown to influence myocyte terminal differentiation in culture. However, none of these growth factors have been shown to reactivate cell division in postmitotic myocytes nor have their in vivo functions been defined satisfactorily. To clarify the role of FGF signaling in heart growth, we prepared two retroviral vectors capable of suppressing (i) functions of FGF receptors (FGFRs) with a dominant-negative mutant of receptor type 1 (FGFR1) or (ii) the translation of endogenous FGFR1 by transcribing its antisense RNA. Both vectors inhibited myocyte proliferation and/or survival during the first week of chicken embryonic development but had much less effect after the second week. No apparent alteration of myocyte growth was observed after overexpression of full-length FGFR1. These results suggest that receptor-coupled FGF signaling regulates cardiac myocyte growth during tubular stages of cardiogenesis but that myocyte growth becomes FGF-independent after the second week of embryogenesis.