
The Burns Lab


Zebrafish Heart Development and Regeneration
Cardiovascular diseases represent the number one cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, affecting a broad spectrum of ages from babies that are born with congenital heart defects to adults that suffer acute myocardial infarctions and/or develop congestive heart failure over time. Our research program is motivated by the simple assumption that we can use the zebrafish as a model organism to understand how the cardiovascular system is established during development and how it efficiently regenerates following injury during adulthood.Specifically, we are: (1) creating zebrafish models of CHDs to implicate human genetic variants as causal for disease pathogenesis and to uncover mechanism of action, and (2) identifying critical factors regulating cardiomyocyte proliferation with the long-term goal of coaxing human hearts towards regeneration instead of scarring.

LAB NEWS
March, 2025
Congratulations to Olivia Weeks on her
presentations at
the International
Fetal
Alcohol
Spectrum
Disorders
conference in
Seattle, WA. She
is doing amazing
work to
understand
how alcohol
exposure during
fetal life affects
heart development and disease.

March, 2025
Congratulations to Felicia Wrantiz
on her
presentation
at the
Developmental
and
Regenerative
Biology
retreat where
she talked
about how
Reptin
regulates
cardiomyocyte
proliferation.


April, 2025
Selfie after successful sorts!