Heart Development and Regeneration Lab
The Heart Development and Regeneration Lab aims to understand the fundamental mechanisms of cardiac cell proliferation and differentiation and how signaling communications instruct these processes:
- How do the cells in the developing heart communicate with each other to build a functional heart?
- How are cardiac cell lineages determined during early heart development?
- How can we promote adult regeneration by remodeling chromatin accessibility?
The lab takes advantage of multiple cutting-edge technologies, including single cell RNA sequencing, ribosome profiling, ChIP-sequencing, CROP-Seq, ATAC-Seq, special transcriptomics, proteomics, CRISPR-Cas9 and confocal imaging, and generates and uses genetic mouse models and human induced pluripotent cells to tackle these and other important questions in the field.
Featured Research and Publications
Research in my laboratory is focused on understanding the mechanisms of cardiovascular development, disease and regeneration. Heart is composed of at least 10 different types of cells, which are functioned both autonomously and dependently. Any disruptions of these functions can lead to heart malformation or disease. However, their functions are still poorly understood. Filling this knowledge gap will improve our understanding of disease pathogenesis and thus shed lights on novel therapeutics. The lab is using multiple lines of cutting-edge technologies such as genetic mouse models, iPSCs, CRISPR/CAS9, scRNA-seq, to address these critical scientific questions. There are several ongoing exciting research projects in the lab, below are a few examples:
Role of Hdac3 in atrial identity and function. Our preliminary data showed that deletion of Hdac3 in the developing atria in mice results in gaining of ventricular identity. Currently, we are investigating the mechanisms by which Hdac3 establishes/maintains atrial identity.
During early heart development, the derivation and commitment of each cardiac lineage is crucial for later cardiac morphogenesis. However, in-depth understandings of lineage specification are still lacking.
Our lab is interested in learning how cardiac lineages are defined at epigenetic level. For instance, how chromatin accessibility may sculpture diversified cardiac lineages including subtypes of cardiomyocyte lineages.
A key process in heart development is ventricular trabeculation and compaction. The failure of this process can result in left ventricular noncompaction cardiomyopathy (LVNC), the third most common form of cardiomyopathy. The etiology of LVNC is still poorly understood, warranting further investigation.
Adult cardiomyocytes are terminally differentiated and have exited the cell cycle, resulting in negligible regenerative capacity in response to myocardial loss after cardiac insults such as heart failure. Cardiomyocyte developmental/proliferative transition is coupled with dramatic epigenetic changes. Our lab is currently trying to harness chromatin status to awaken adult cardiomyocyte regenerative capacity.
Join Our Lab
We are committed to training the next generation of scientists as the true future of science and medicine. We are looking for highly motivated postdoctoral researchers and students to join our team. View open positions or contact our team using the form below.
