Departments of Basic Medical Sciences Seminar

Presenter

Seminar Title

• Fixing Broken Hearts: Mechanisms of Cardiac Repair and Maturation

Objectives

1. Dr. Liu will talk about the immune regulation of cardiac regeneration, detailing how specific immune signaling pathways and cellular interactions govern the heart's ability to repair itself following injury.
2. He will then discuss recent insights into the molecular and epigenetic mechanisms driving postnatal maturation, highlighting how disrupting these pathways leads to cardiomyopathies and arrhythmia.
3. Finally, he will introduce new in vivo functional genomics approaches that identify novel regulators of maturation and establish mechanistic links between impaired maturation and human cardiac disease.

Research Interests

Congenital heart diseases are one of the most common birth defects in humans, and these arise from developmental defects during embryogenesis. Many of these diseases have a genetic component, but they might also be affected by environmental factors such as mechanical forces. The Liu Lab combines genetics, molecular and cell biology to study cardiac development and function, focusing on the molecular mechanisms that link mechanical forces and genetic factors to the morphogenesis of the heart. Our studies using zebrafish as a model system serve as the basic foundation to address the key questions in cardiac development and function, and could provide novel therapeutic interventions for cardiac diseases.

BMS Faculty Hosts

• Liya Yin, MD, PhD

For additional information, please contact Lisa Dunk, 602-827-2188. This seminar will be hosted in a hybrid format: both in person at Health Sciences Education Building (HSEB), B302 and via Zoom.

CME credit provided by the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson.