
The Burns Lab


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.

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.



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.