Area of research
Molecular Biology · Cell Biology
Research interest
Research topics from publications: Generation and Application of the Zebrafish heg1 Mutant as a Cardiovascular Disease Model; Naoxintong restores ischemia injury and inhibits thrombosis via COX2-VEGF/ NFκB signaling; Lipin 1 deficiency causes adult-onset myasthenia with motor neuron dysfunction in humans and neuromuscular junction defects in zebrafish. Representative work: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of global mortality, which has caused a huge burden on the quality of human life. Therefore, experimental animal models of CVD have become essential tools for analyzing the pathogenesis, developing drug screening, and testing potential therapeutic strategies. In recent decades, zebrafish has entered the field of CVD as an important model organism. HEG1, a heart development protein with EGF like domains 1, plays important roles in the development of vertebrate cardiovascular system. Loss of HEG1 will affect the stabilization of vascular endothelial cell connection and eventually lead to dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). Here, we generated a heg1-s caused adult-onset syndromic myasthenia with peripheral neuropathy. Moreover, zebrafish could be used to model the neuromuscular phenotypes due to the lipin 1 deficiency, where a novel pathological role of over-activated Notch signaling was discovered and further confirmed in mammalian cell lines