Grant: Undergraduate: Mobility, musculoskeletal health and arthritis - ICS

Stem cells have the potential to treat numerous diseases that currently have no cure, especially degenerative diseases such as muscular dystrophy. Stems cells have given us this exciting possibility due to their capacity to, not only self-renew but also differentiate into every type of cell in the body; thus providing the material that can be used to regenerate diseased tissue. The long-term goal of the research group is to use stem cells as a treatment for muscular dystrophy, but we must first be able to create protocols to direct the differentiation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to skeletal muscle. In order to do this, we must increase our knowledge of the specific gene expression and molecular mechanisms that direct muscle development, or myogenesis. The purpose of this proposal is to determine the role of muscle regulatory factors (MRFs) to differentially activate gene expression. Also to possibly identify coactivators that differentially interact with MRFs to allow muscle specific gene expression and muscle development. The coactivators will be determined with the pull-down methods using MRF bound promoter extracts and will be identified using quantitative mass spectrometry. The specific role of the identified coactivators will be determined using RNA interference to knockdown their activity and the expression of genes of interest will be examined using qualitative Real-time PCR. This research will help to define the roles of MRFs, as well as identify new proteins that were not known to be involved in myogenesis. The completion of this research will bring us one step closer to finding a treatment for muscular dystrophy.