Seminar

Hedgehog Signalling and Transcriptional regulation during zebrafish myogenesis

Prof. Philip Ingham

The skeletal muscles of vertebrates are composed of different types of fibre that have distinct physiological properties. Type I or slow-twitch fibres have a slow contraction velocity and rate of fatigue whereas type II or fast twitch fibres contract and fatigue rapidly. Although discrete populations of slow and fast twitch fibres are established during embryonic development, the composition of muscles can be remodelled postnatally through fibre type switching in response to physiological cues. While progress has been made in characterising the molecular basis of fibre type switching, how the different lineages are initially specified during embryogenesis has remained relatively poorly understood.We have been addressing this question using the zebrafish embryo as an experimental paradigm.