Maves Lab

Our lab uses the zebrafish model to understand cellular differentiation during cardiac and skeletal muscle development, with the goal of understanding the mechanisms behind congenital heart defects and muscular dystrophy. We are driven by the beauty of the zebrafish embryo as well as the capacity for zebrafish to inform human development and disease. We use Duchenne muscular dystrophy (dmd) zebrafish to identify novel epigenetic drugs that ameliorate DMD as well as to help characterize mechanisms of epigenetic dysregulation in DMD. We also apply our expertise in using CRISPR to study gene knock-outs of new human congenital heart disease loci in zebrafish.