Our on-going research during the last year is that 1) we have developed a tissue-clearing method to map the physical patterns of sympathetic and parasympathetic nerve branching in the myocardium as well as the cardiac conduction system including the His-Purkinje system, and 2) we have developed a 3D co-culture system of iPS-derived cardiomyocytes with sympathetic neurons, endothelial cells, and epicardial cells to examine whether the co-cultured cardiomyocytes improve structural and gene expression properties. In a similar line of experiments, we are analyzing mutants lacking sympathetic nerves to examine what happens to the myocardium development and conduction system architecture in the absence of sympathetic innervation. These studies will provide a mechanistic framework for the developmental program of the neuro-vascular patterning and the functional consequence of sympathetic innervation in the developing heart.
| Sandeep, Nefthi; Uchida, Yutaka; Ratnayaka, Kanishka et al. (2016) Characterizing the angiogenic activity of patients with single ventricle physiology and aortopulmonary collateral vessels. J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 151:1126-35.e2 |
| Liu, Zhihui; Li, Wenling; Ma, Xuefei et al. (2014) Essential role of the zinc finger transcription factor Casz1 for mammalian cardiac morphogenesis and development. J Biol Chem 289:29801-16 |
| Mukouyama, Yoh-suke (2014) Vessel-dependent recruitment of sympathetic axons: looking for innervation in all the right places. J Clin Invest 124:2855-7 |
| Nam, Joseph; Onitsuka, Izumi; Hatch, John et al. (2013) Coronary veins determine the pattern of sympathetic innervation in the developing heart. Development 140:1475-85 |
| Mukouyama, Yoh-suke; James, Jennifer; Nam, Joseph et al. (2012) Whole-mount confocal microscopy for vascular branching morphogenesis. Methods Mol Biol 843:69-78 |
