Ruohola-Baker Lab

One of the key characteristics of stem cells is their capacity to self-renew throughout the lifetime of an animal. Stem Cell self-renewing division is tightly controlled process; too little division disrupts the homeostasis of the tissue while too much can result in cancer. Ruohola-Baker laboratory has shown that miRNAs are required for stem cell division in Drosophila and human and the goal now is to identify and analyze the regulation of critical miRNAs in stem cell based regeneration. In particular, the laboratory studies the maturation process that takes place during the transition from fetal to adult heart. In metazoans a switch in energy metabolism from glycolysis to fatty acid (FA) oxidation is observed during this transition. Many heart diseases, for example most muscular dystrophies are manifested as late onset heart defects, during cardiomyocyte postnatal maturation. However, human cardiomyocyte maturation is poorly understood process at the moment. Using large scale profiling methods, Ruohola-Baker laboratory showed that the molecular signatures in in-vitro matured hESC derived cardiomyocytes are similar to those seen in the in-vivo derived mature cardiac tissues, thus enabling them to be used as excellent model to identify the metabolites and microRNAs that accelerate human cardiac maturation. The laboratory has already found key microRNAs in the process and shown that they regulate growth, force and the fundamental metabolic switch to fatty acid utilization in cardiomyocyte maturation. Hence these miRNAs and their targets now reveal themselves as key tools for disease interventions.

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Ruohola-Baker Lab