**1. Introduction**

140 Congenital Heart Disease – Selected Aspects

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Congenital heart defects (CHD) are the most common birth defects, occurring in about 0.7% of all newborn infants. There are multiple lines of evidence that genetic components are involved in developing CHD pathogenesis. An important aspect in understanding disease mechanisms is that in addition to contributions from a single disease-causing gene (usually seen in many familial cases of CHD), a multitude of other genetically interacting loci can also influence the severity or progression of the disease, often diagnosed as idiopathic CHD. It is likely that such genetic interactions underlie a large proportion of cases of idiopathic CHD, where a direct link to known cardiogenic genes yet to be identified. Recent advances in stem cell research and in the growing field of systems biology provide a tremendous amount of new data leading to new hypotheses and to new heart disease gene candidates that may also have potential roles during heart formation and establishment of cardiac function. Usually, these hypotheses are tested in cell-based assays and eventually in the mouse model, however both systems have their own particular set of limitations. In this article we review recent advancements in using *Drosophila melanogaster* as a model organism to study basic mechanisms of heart development, cardiac function and disease.
