Overview

Our research is focused on how muscle stem cells work to regenerate muscle tissue and how the environment they live in can influence their ability to repair muscle damage. This capacity to regenerate is necessary to replace, grow and repair our skeletal muscle throughout our lives. When something goes wrong with the function of these stem cells (called satellite cells), muscle tissue wastes away, which is the case for people suffering from muscular dystrophies. And as we age, maintaining muscle mass becomes increasingly difficult, also a result of changes in the effectiveness of our satellite cells. We are trying to address both of these areas by exploring how these stem cells respond to epigenetic influences, and how we can modify the muscle environment in which these satellite cells live to improve their regenerative function. We are continually expanding our understanding of the genes necessary to maintain muscle stem cells in a healthy, functional state. The goal of the Dilworth Lab is to understand why the genes that maintain stem cells in a healthy state sometimes get turned off and how we can use epigenetics to turn these genes back on, so our satellite cells can function properly and effectively throughout our lifetime.