Molecular Biology of Cardiocyte Growth and Heart Failure

Our research project involves the use of recombinant DNA technology and molecular immunological techniques to explore the molecular biology of cardiomyocyte growth and development in the disease and the normal state. The research can be divided into four main subprojects:

i) Molecular basis of differentiation and cell growth. We have selected the myocyte as a model system, with a specific focus on the genetic expression of a nuclear factor - a non-histone chromatin protein, M.W. 68 kDa, pI 7.3

ii) Gene structure and function. We have selected the cardiac myosin heavy chain gene as our specific myocyte in order to investigate the gene’s structure and function in relation to cellular differentiation, growth hypertrophy and cell death.

iii) Cell growth. A genetically determined cardiovascular disease model, hamster cardiomyopathy, has been chosen to study cell growth in normal and disease states.

iv) Genes of the cardiovascular system. We have generated more than 80,000 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from cDNA libraries using large-scale automated DNA sequencing. These ESTs will be used as markers for defining novel genes involved in cardiac development and disease.