Research Interests:
Functional genomics and epigenetic regulation of development
I am a Professor of Biology interested in how the environment affects embryonic development, and how these effects can persist in an individual and their offspring. One main area of focus for my work is on the importance of oxygen for supporting metabolism during development and in adult organs such as the heart and brain. This work has implications for improving our ability to understand and treat tissue damage due to heart attack and stroke. I believe that nature has already solved most of the problems associated with human diseases through adaptation of organisms to extreme or unique environments – and I am searching for “Nature’s solutions” to these global health issues. For example, embryos of annual killifish from Venezuela that can survive for months in the complete absence of oxygen by arresting their development, stopping their heart, and entering a coma-like state of dormancy. The mechanisms these embryos use to survive extreme conditions may help us understand how to devise interventions to improve human performance in extreme environments, or provide mechanisms to engineer human cells and tissues to function in novel and stressful environments.
Current Projects:
- Evaluating the role of vitamin D signaling in the regulation of metabolic dormancy and aging in annual killifishes
- Understanding the role of small noncoding RNAs in regulating stress tolerance
- Using multiomic approaches to understand organismal responses and adaptation to environmental change