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zebrafish heart development & regeneration

Cardiovascular diseases represent the number one cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, affecting a broad spectrum of ages from babies that are born with congenital heart defects to adults that suffer acute myocardial infarctions and/or develop congestive heart failure over time. Our research program is motivated by the simple assumption that we can use the zebrafish as a model organism to understand how the cardiovascular system is established during development and how it efficiently regenerates following injury during adulthood.Specifically, we are: (1) creating zebrafish models of CHDs to implicate human genetic variants as causal for disease pathogenesis and to uncover mechanism of action, and (2) identifying critical factors regulating cardiomyocyte proliferation with the long-term goal of coaxing human hearts towards regeneration instead of scarring. 

Lab News...

November 4, 2022

Congratulations to Alex Akerberg on his new publication describing the conserved role of RBPMS2 

for cardiac function

in zebrafish and 

human iPSC-

derived cardio-

myocytes. Also,

the cover! 

 

Link to PDF. 

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October 17, 2022

Congratulations to co-first authors 

Mengmeng Huang and Alex Akerberg

for their new

publication out in

Nature Comms 

describing an

Rbfox-

deficient

zebrafish

model of

hypoplastic

left heart

syndrome. 

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February 6, 2022

Congratulations to Maryline Abrial and Sandeep Basu for

their new

manuscript

describing

a zebrafish

model of

thoracic aortic root

aneurysm. Sandeep will also be featured in a "First Person" interview.

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