Cardiovascular Development

Our lab is interested in the transcriptional pathways regulating tissue and organ formation during mammalian embryonic development. Current work in the lab is focused on defining the pathways regulating the development of cardiac and skeletal muscle, the vascular endothelium, and neural crest. We use a combination of conditional gene knockouts and fate mapping techniques in mice to define the embryological origins of the heart and ultimately how the mature heart is assembled. This work is particularly relevant to understand the molecular and genetic mechanisms underlying congenital heart disease and infant morbidity and mortality in humans.