Pappas/Gregorio Laboratory

Laboratory of
Christopher Pappas and Carol Gregorio

The research in our laboratory is focused on identifying the components and molecular mechanisms regulating actin-thin filament architecture in cardiac and skeletal muscle during development, with the long-term goal of elucidating how mutations in proteins involved in this process lead to human myopathies.

The research objectives of the laboratory can be broadly summarized as follows:

Understanding the cellular mechanisms involved in the assembly, regulation and maintenance of sarcomeric proteins in cardiac muscle in health and disease.
Deciphering the mechanisms critical for precisely specifying and maintaining the lengths of actin-thin filaments. Actin is an indispensable structural element of cells and is a major component of striated muscle. Dysregulation of thin filament lengths associated with nemaline myopathy in skeletal muscle and dilated cardiomyopathy in cardiac muscle. We are determining how genetic defects in proteins that regulate thin filament assembly lead to these myopathies.

Lab Members