Current Projects

Some recent examples of the approaches taken by our laboratory include:

Use of antisense morpholinos to selectively target individual or combinations of GATA factors during zebrafish embryogenesis, to gain insight into the “GATA code” that regulates various aspects of blood, liver, pancreas, and heart development.
Generation of transgenic zebrafish that express GFP or RFP under the control of GATA4 or GATA6 genomic sequences to find the cis-elements and trans-factors that target expression of these GATA factors to specific lineages and tissues.
Development of transgenic approaches that allow us to conditionally inactivate BMP signaling.
Generation of novel lines of murine ES cells that also allow us to manipulate BMP and GATA activity at various stages of in vitro development for studying the development of hematopoietic, cardiogenic, and other cell lineages.

In summary, we develop and exploit various animal models, so that we can understand how cell types, tissues, and organs form under the control of GATA transcription factors, and why this process can fail during embryogenesis and throughout life.