One University of Guelph research team’s study on fish hearts could lead to some real benefits for humans.

Prof. Todd Gillis and PhD student Elizabeth Johnston recently published a study in the Journal of Experimental Biology laying out what they found — a specific protein is responsible for fish being able to change the size of their heart depending on how warm or cool the water they live in is.

Speaking with the Mercury Tribune, Gillis says the study came about while looking at how some animals are more easily able to adapt to their environments from season to season.

“I do a lot of work trying to understand how a variety of different animals are able to adapt to their environment through evolution,” he says.

“If an environment changes — normal changes, not global warming — how (is) that animal able to deal with it in order to maintain function?”

Gillis says studies had already shown that the heart of some fish — in this case, a rainbow trout — will grow when exposed to cooler waters.

“We previously demonstrated just by taking a fish and changing its temperature that by changing it from 12 degrees down to four degrees, their heart gets bigger and they increase the amount of connective tissue,” he says.

“We were interested in trout because they specifically maintain function and keep swimming in cold water in the wintertime. That was a clue that they’re able to modify how their heart works, because if they couldn’t modify their heart, the heart would slow down.”

Gillis and Johnston’s work found that the exposure of fish heart cells to TGF-Beta1, a protein known to be a signal for regulating connective tissue, would lead to increased production of collagen. This meant that when the trout’s heart would grow with the dropping temperature of the water, it would remain strong.

The university professor says this study could potentially have an impact for people with cardiac problems, as the same protein is a signal for regulating connective tissue in humans as well.