The focus of my group is to achieve targeted differentiation of Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) by regulating signaling pathways. MSC have the potential of differentiating into a variety of different cell types & therefore offer therapeutic potential to treat a variety of disorders. Therefore it is important to understand the precise mechanisms involved in MSC differentiation, how these mechanisms are regulated and how to manipulate these to achieve differentiation into the desired lineage.Previously we have identified signaling pathways critical for bone marrow derived MSC growth and differentiation (Ng Blood 2008) & miRNA networks that regulate signaling pathways in MSC (Koh BMC Genomics 2010). In the past few years my lab has focused on understanding the role of miRNAs in regulating MSC differentiation. Tools & approaches developed by our group for understanding MSC differentiation are also being used by our collaborators to understand embryonic stem cell (ESC) differentiation and the response of embryonic stem cells to toxins in the environment.

We are also interested in connecting the trasncriptome data to cellular phenotype. This is difficult but becoming increasingly important with the advent of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies. We can now generate accurate records of DNA sequence as well of the transcriptome with sensitivity to the single molecule level However what this data means and how this can help us interpret the cellular phenotype still remains a challenge. We have developed tools & approaches to solve this issue & sucessfuly connected transcriptome data to phenotypes in MSC (Guneta 2016, Takeda 2016), ESC (Wong 2016), skin cells (Sundaram 2013), hair follicles as well as developong zebrafish organs (Vaz 2016).

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