Fellowship Projects
2019 – 2021 Funded Post-Doctoral Fellowship Projects
Deconstructing the myogenic lineages at single cell resolution
Researcher: Alex Lin
Institute: Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
Supervisor: Michael Rudnicki
Award Value: $150,000
Adult skeletal muscle has the remarkable capacity to regenerate in response to injury, which is imparted by muscle stem cells (MuSCs). Even though adult skeletal muscle is a diverse tissue comprised of different muscle groups with various fiber type compositions, our understanding of how a MuSC makes a myofiber is a linear process with sequential activation of transcription factors. This prevailing dogma of linear activation during MuSC commitment cannot account for the functional diversity observed at the tissue level or the bipotential activity of MuSCs, such as making brown fat. We hypothesize that MuSCs are primed and exist in discrete subpopulations that differentiate down multiple lineages. The existence of subpopulations suggests population heterogeneity of the MuSCs and a hierarchical organization with distinct functional properties. To address this our work will combine classical lineage tracing experiments with molecular profiling and characterization. Use of single cell RNA sequencing will help to unravelling the complexities by profiling single cells instead of heterogeneous bulk populations. We hypothesize that using scRNAseq of MuSCs in combination with lineage tracing models; will uncover novel subpopulations and their regulators, and ultimately, deconstruct the myogenic lineages.
2016 – 2019 Fellowships
Local ON/OFF control of tolerance toward allograft cell transplants
Jeffrey Harding, Lunenfeld-Tannenbaum Research Institute
Supervisor: Andras Nagy
Dissecting the role of Notch signaling during the transition from HE to HSC
Vladimir Manchev, University Health Network
Supervisor: Gordon Keller
2017-2019 (co-funded by Medicine by Design):
Rescuing vision in models of retinal degeneration
Project Leader: Arturo Ortin-Martinez, University Health Network (Valerie Wallace lab)
Developing an immune-cell approach to cardiac regeneration
Project Leader: Yiming Wang, University Health Network (Slava Epelman lab)
2018 – 2020 Fellow
Discovering novel regulators of human totipotent stem cells
Project Leader: Tatsuya Yamakawa, The Hospital for Sick Children (Janet Rossant)