Judy Davie received her B.A. degree in Molecular Biology from Auburn University in 1992 and her Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1998. She was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Cancer Society to study at the U.T.M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and joined SIUC in August 2006. She holds a joint appointment with the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department and the SimmonsCooper Cancer Institute.
(618) 453-5002
email: jdavie@siumed.edu
The major research interest in my lab is to understand how genes are regulated
during skeletal muscle differentiation. One valuable aspect of studying muscle
differentiation is that this process can be studied in animal models or a cell
culture system. During skeletal muscle differentiation, mesodermal precursor
cells specify to become committed myogenic cells, termed myoblasts. Myoblasts
then fuse and give rise to multinucleate myofibers that continue to differentiate
to form mature skeletal muscle. The entire process of skeletal muscle differentiation
is controlled by four highly related basic helix loop helix transcription factors
known as the Myogenic Regulatory Factors (MRFs). The MRFs are expressed in distinct
but overlapping temporal patterns during embryogenesis and adult life. Despite
the MRFs’ essential roles in skeletal muscle differentiation and maintenance,
the molecular mechanisms by which these factors selectively regulate different
target genes are unclear. We have initiated our studies with myogenin, the MRF
highly expressed during muscle fiber fusion. Mice lacking myogenin die at birth
due to a large reduction in muscle fiber. We have shown that myogenin regulates
a large class of genes essential for the structural integrity of muscle, including
many components of the sarcomeric Z-disk. Mutations in several of the Z-disk
components identified have been implicated in congenital myopathies and muscular
dystrophies. Currently, we are extending our findings to understand how myogenin
regulates its essential class of structural genes throughout development and
adult life. We are interested in defining how myogenin controls its genetic
program using a combination of biochemical, molecular and cell biological approaches.
Knapp J.R., Davie J.K., Myer A., Meadows E., Olson E.N., Klein W.H. Loss of myogenin in postnatal life leads to normal skeletal muscle but reduced body size. Development. 2006. Feb;133(4):601-10. (PubMed)
Davie, J.K., Cho, J.H., Meadows, J.E., Flynn, J.M., Knapp, J.R., and Klein, W.H. Target gene selectivity of the myogenic basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor myogenin in embryonic muscle. Developmental Biology. 2007. Vol. 311 (2):650-664.
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