The common fundamental goals of the projects are to characterize and understand normal and abnormal patterns of gene expression in developing muscle from the stem cell state through to maturity. Further, we aim to understand the molecular consequences of specific genetic defects and to identify appropriate targets for therapeutic intervention.
To achieve these fundamental research goals we:
- Utilize mice and zebrafish models of Duchenne/Becker Muscular Dystrophy (DMD/BMD) and other Muscular Dystrophies
- Enroll patients with specific neuromuscular disorders in our research
- identify new muscle-specific genes and proteins through biochemical and molecular analysis