Year 4

In the last year, we have made significant progress on this project, which aims to understand how heart cells can be produced from pluripotent cells. We have been able to understand the gene program that is controlled by a so-called chromatin remodeling protein, a protein that unwinds DNA to allow genes to be turned on. This protein, called Baf60c, turns on many of the genes that give a heart cell its basic functions, like beating. We have also created stem cell -based tools that will allow us in the final year of this project to identify the partner proteins that allow Baf60c to function, and where in our genome Baf60c turns genes on.