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| Studying the mechanisms that cause heart failure | ||||||||
| Schools of Biological Sciences and Pharmacy, University of Reading | ||||||||
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Heart failure has a serious impact on our society and once diagnosed has a 5 year survival rate worse than most cancers, with 40% of patients dying within a year. In the United Kingdom about 63,000 new cases are diagnosed each year with an economic burden of over £500 million. Heart failure may occur as a result of a heart attack or prolonged high blood pressure. In contrast, exercise leads to beneficial myocardial adaptation. The pathways that lead to either beneficial physiological or detrimental pathological adaptation are still poorly understood. The primary goal of my laboratory is to determine the mechanisms and signalling pathways associated with myocardial adaptation and cardiac hypertrophy in response to mechanical stress. This project will involve biochemical, cell/molecular biological techniques such as tissue culture, real-time RT-PCR, Western immunoblotting, gene overexpression and siRNA knockdown and confocal microscopy. References Boateng SY, Senyo SE, Qi L, Goldspink PH and Russell B. Myocyte remodelling in response to hypertrophic stimuli requires nucleocytoplasmic shuttling of muscle LIM protein. J Mol Cell Cardiol 47(4): 426-35 (2009). Boateng SY and Goldspink PH. Assembly and maintenance of the sarcomere night and day. Cardiovascular Research (Review). 2008;77(4):667-75 (2008). Boateng SY, Berlin JB, Geenen DL, Margulies KB, de Tombe PP and Russell B. Cardiac dysfunction and heart failure are associated with abnormalities in the subcellular distribution and amounts of oligomeric muscle LIM protein. Am J Physiol-Heart Circ Physiol 292(1):H259-69 (2007). Lixin Qi and Boateng SY. The circadian protein Clock localizes to the sarcomeric Z-disk and is a sensor of myofilament cross-bridge activity in cardiac myocytes. Biochem Biophys Res Comm 352(4):1054-1059 (2006). Potential post-doctoral positions from European funding The European Commission FP7 offers post-doctoral opportunities for foreign post-docs outside Europe to continue their careers within Europe after obtaining their PhD from their home country. These include post-docs from North and South America, Australasia and other countries outside the European Union. These Marie Curie fellowship grants, typically 2 years, have a high success rate (>80%) but the interested applicant must apply with the principle investigator from a European institution. If you are interested in continuing your research career at the University of Reading and in cardiovascular research then please contact me. We can then discuss applying for a joint grant with you as a named post-doc. The results usually take about 6 months from the time of application so please bear this in mind. |
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