Person

Ferguson, Bradley S.

"My lab is focused on understanding signaling and gene regulatory mechanisms that link metabolic disease to pathological cardiac remodeling and ultimately heart failure. In particular the lab is focused on delineating epigenetic mechanisms that regulate pathological cardiac hypertrophy and fibrosis under conditions of obesity and diabetes. DNA is tightly wrapped around proteins called histones to form chromatin. Post-translational modification (e.g. acetylation and methylation) of histone tails represents one epigenetic mechanism that can alter gene expression. Histone deacetylases (HDACs) and histone acetyltransferases (HATs) are one group of enzymes that can target histone tails for acetylation/deacetylation to regulate gene transcription."