Heart development is a complex process that begins with differentiation of committed precursors, and continues after birth with the patterning and regulation of gene programs that are relevant to adult heart disease.  Understanding these processes are essential to understand the basis of congenital heart disease, inherited heart diseases, and to devise strategies to create new heart cells for regenerative therapy.

Our lab has focused on their transcriptional regulation of these processes, and more recently how chromatin remodeling factors are critically relevant to heart development. We believe that these are key orchestrators of transcriptional pathways that can impart cardiac mesoderm properties to embryonic and adult stem cells. Our studies pursue several genetic and biochemical avenues to elucidate how transcription factors and chromatin remodelling complexes regulates cardiac organogenesis and differentiation.