Research Interests

Our laboratory uses genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics approaches to understand basic cellular processes in human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models. Human iPSCs can be directed to differentiate into different types of cells in the body including heart, muscle, and vascular cells, therefore providing a powerful in vitro model to probe cell biology under different developmental and stress response scenarios. Currently we are working on two projects in the areas of cellular communication and protein homeostasis:

1. How do different cells in a tissue communicate through secreted nucleic acids and proteins? In recent work, we have mapped secreted non-coding RNAs from multiple cell types derived from human iPSCs (cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells, fibroblasts) that may function in intercellular communications and that may be harnessed as a quantitative metric to assess the differentiation status and purity of hPSC-derived cardiac cells. Future work will develop this approach to model longitudinal changes in cellular communication networks under stress and disease using computational, single-cell, and proteomics strategies.
2. What is the role of protein homeostasis during cell fate transitions? In the past few years we have developed analytical and computational methods to measure the individual half-life of thousands of protein species in complex systems. We discovered widespread changes in protein synthesis and degradation rates in animal models that to discover new disease signatures. Going forward, we are planning to apply our tools to identify the protein quality control factors that are important for cellular differentiation in iPSC systems as well as during transitions from stress to cellular senescence.