{"id":27,"date":"2020-05-19T20:47:04","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T20:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lab.research.sickkids.ca\/scott\/?page_id=27"},"modified":"2025-11-04T17:25:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T17:25:24","slug":"research","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/lab.research.sickkids.ca\/scott\/research\/","title":{"rendered":"Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Research projects<\/h2>\n

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We use a number of approaches to carry out our research, including creation of numerous mutant and transgenic lines to examine gene function and image cells as they build the heart in real time. In collaboration with Dr. Michael Wilson at SickKids, we use sophisticated genomics approaches to discover genetic elements key to cardiac development and disease. By defining what is conserved between zebrafish and human, a gap that spans over 400 million years of evolution, we are starting to define the critical drivers of heart development and disease. Combined with the explosion of human genome sequences that are available, we aim to pinpoint the key genetic events that lead to cardiovascular disease, and that can be exploited for therapies. Further, the embryonic heart development program is re-deployed during adult zebrafish cardiac regeneration. We are therefore interested in studying the ability of key developmental gene regulatory networks to drive a regenerative response.<\/p>\n

In the long term, this knowledge will be used to devise therapies based on activating regenerative pathways to heal the damaged heart, and using zebrafish embryos to screen for potential drugs to alleviate the burden of congenital heart defects and other diseases. Discovering how zebrafish cardiac progenitors are made and develop will therefore drive future efforts to repair what is at present irreparable heart disease. Given the common progenitors shared between the heart and craniofacial muscles, a further area of growing interest is in how pharyngeal mesoderm development is controlled and uncovering pathways that can lead to orofacial clefting and other forms of craniofacial malformations.<\/p>\n

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<\/span>CURRENT PROJECTS<\/span><\/div><\/div>[vc_empty_space][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner]