FIVM Seminar Series presents: Signal control during tissue regeneration in zebrafish
Regeneration is the process by which organisms replace lost or damaged tissue. Different species have varying capabilities to regenerate parts of the body after injury. A thorough understanding of the molecular basis of regeneration mechanisms is needed in an attempt to improve the poor regenerative capacity in some animal and human tissues. While the catalog of defined molecular factors in tissue regeneration is expanding, it has become critical to determine the regulatory mechanisms that control gene expression in regeneration contexts.
Dr. Kenneth Poss’ team has recently described in several studies a class of regulatory sequences they named tissue regeneration enhancer elements (TREEs) that contain sequence information necessary for precise spatiotemporal control of regeneration genes. On Friday, September 15, Dr. Kenneth Poss will talk about his team’s ongoing work to identify gene regulatory programs of regeneration, as well as their discoveries that TREEs of zebrafish origin can be engineered in viral gene therapy constructs to target expression of pro-regenerative factors to mammalian injury sites and enhance tissue repair.
Dr. Kenneth Poss is James B. Duke Professor of Regenerative Biology and Head of the Duke Regeneration Center at Duke University. He received his B.A. in Biology from Carleton College in 1992, and his Ph.D. in Biology from MIT in 1998 for research with Susumu Tonegawa. Dr. Poss was a postdoctoral fellow with Mark Keating at the University of Utah and Boston Children’s Hospital. In 2003, he initiated his research program at Duke to investigate zebrafish models of regeneration. Dr. Poss discovered heart regeneration in zebrafish, establishing an important natural model of robust cardiac repair, and his lab has identified key mechanisms of tissue regeneration in this animal model over the past 20 years. Dr. Poss’ research goal is to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms of regeneration, and to use this information to improve the poor regenerative capacity of animal and human tissues like the heart, spinal cord, and limbs.