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Dr. Yong Zhou studied pharmacology in the Key Laboratory of Marine Drugs, Chinese Ministry of Education, Institute of Marine Drugs and Food and received his PhD degree in engineering from Ocean University of China in 2006. As an exchange student, he carried out his PhD thesis in Institute of Matria Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences |
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and Peking Union Medical College from 2002 to 2006. During his PhD, he developed a novel receptor protein microarray for drug discovery and published his work in US Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening and Germany. From 2006 to 2008, he studied protein regulation network of oocyte maturation using Xenopus laevis as a postdoc research fellow in Ottawa Health Research Institute, University of Ottawa, Canada and published his work in Mol. Cell. Biol. Dr. Zhou joined Burns' Lab in Cardiovascular Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School in 2008, and currently studies the cardiac progenitor cells and congenital heart disease using zebrafish as a postdoc research fellow. Dr. Zhou recently published a paper in Nature.
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The title of his paper is "Latent TGF-β binding protein 3 identifies a second heart field in zebrafish " (Nature. 2011, 474, 645–8 (June 30)). Here is the short description of his work:
The four-chambered mammalian heart develops from two fields of cardiac progenitor cells distinguished by their spatiotemporal patterns of differentiation and contributions to the definitive heart. The first heart field differentiates earlier in lateral plate mesoderm, generates the linear heart tube and ultimately gives rise to the left ventricle. The second heart field (SHF) differentiates later in pharyngeal mesoderm, elongates the heart tube, and gives rise to the outflow tract and much of the right ventricle. Because hearts in lower vertebrates contain a rudimentary outflow tract but not a right ventricle, the existence and function of SHF-like cells in these species has remained a topic of speculation. By constructing of a set of transgenic fish lines, Zhou et al. provide direct evidence from Cre/Lox-mediated lineage tracing and genetic analysis in zebrafish, that latent TGF-β binding protein 3 (ltbp3) transcripts mark a field of cardiac progenitor cells with defining characteristics of the anterior SHF in mammals. Specifically, ltbp3 cells differentiate in pharyngeal mesoderm after formation of the heart tube, elongate the heart tube at the outflow pole, and give rise to three cardiovascular lineages in the outflow tract and myocardium in the distal ventricle. Their findings uncover a requirement for ltbp3-TGF-β signaling during zebrafish SHF development, a process that serves to enlarge the single ventricular chamber in this species.
If anyone is interested in his research, you can email him directly at yzhou@cvrc.mgh.harvard.edu
Cheers
HMS-CSSA
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