Zebrafish ankrd1a as a common player in heart regeneration and skeletal muscle repair - a new prospect for unlocking regenerative potential of human heart - ZEBARRThe ZEBARR project offers novel approach to identify targets that might contribute to restoration of impaired cardiac function by promotion of myocardial regeneration. By ZEBARR we will expand the understanding of cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in heart regeneration and skeletal muscle repair and contribute to efforts directed towards the development of efficient therapies to push human heart to become prone to regeneration.Regeneration of heart and repair of skeletal muscle in zebrafish are driven by different mechanisms; injured heart gets fully regenerated in 60 days by proliferation of unaffected cardiomyocytes, while skeletal muscle replace the injured tissue by activation of dedicated satellite-like cells that pass through transformation to form myofibers. Do these processes have common players, and if they do, in which particular molecular event(s) they participate? We hypothesized that these common players and associated pathways do exist and might help to unlock the endogenous regenerative mechanism of human heart.In our preliminary experiments, the ankrd1a gene, homologue of mammalian ANKRD1, stood out as a common player in these processes. Deciphering the precise role of ankrd1a in different pathways involved in regeneration of zebrafish heart and repair of skeletal muscle and its contribution to the regenerative potential of different zebrafish muscles will help us to understand these very important processes in depth. Moreover, ankrd1a might become strong candidate to consider in design of novel strategies for healing human heart following myocardial infraction.This research is supported by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia Grant No 7739807