Epigenetic Mechanisms in Regenerative Medicine

Regenerative medicine is aiming to develop methods to regrow, repair and replace damaged or diseased cells, organs or tissues. Given the same genome, why neonatal mouse heart has the ability to regenerate up to 7 days after birth? 

Our lab is interested in understand what epigenetic mechanisms contributed to the process of regeneration. Moreover, how the regenerative ability is lost during evolution. A key question is to understand when and how a differentiated cell cannot re-active de-differentiation process. 

We showed that chromatin accessibility plays a key role enforcing cell fate decisions. This discovery could aid strategies to manipulate this process during the process of regeneration. (Cell Reports, 2021)