The LeBert Laboratory
An inability to regenerate wounded tissue is a major clinical problem with obvious application to human health. There are a limited number of human tissues that have the ability to regenerate, such as the human liver. Most tissues, however, have limited capacity for regeneration, and instead heal by forming scar tissue. Unfortunately, scars do not retain the original functionality of the tissue. Therefore, it is important to understand how to improve functional outcomes in human tissues that fail to regenerate or result in scar formation after tissue damage.
The goal of the laboratory is to understand how physical damage initiates a chain of gene expression changes that permit regeneration in the zebrafish model system. Specifically, what are the earliest changes that occur in response to damage? We believe that early wound signals such as calcium and hydrogen peroxide promote immediate changes in microRNA (miRNA) expression at the wound. Further, these early changes in miRNA expression are then essential in driving wound healing towards a regenerative outcome. My lab utilizes a combination of gene expression analysis, advanced microscopy, and gene expression manipulation techniques to investigate the pathways governing regeneration in the larval zebrafish .
The LeBert laboratory is part of the Department of Biology in beautiful Marquette Michigan along the shore of Lake Superior.
