Charles P. Emerson, Jr., Ph.D.
Director and Senior Scientist
Stem cells, skeletal myogenesis, muscle regeneration, tumorgenesis
Email: emersonc at bbri.org

Research Summary
Our laboratory investigates signaling and transcriptional mechanisms controlling skeletal myogenesis, muscle regeneration and tumorigenesis.  Molecular, transgenic and genetic approaches are being used in mouse and chick embryos to characterize transcription enhancers and signaling regulators that control the myogenic regulatory genes, Myf5 and MyoD, for specification of muscle progenitor lineages. Novel regulatory genes have been identified, including a new family of heparan sulfatase enzymes that function as regulators of Hedgehog, FGF and Wnt signaling in muscle and neural stem cells and as tumor suppressor genes in humans.

Identification of a Myf5 epaxial somite transcription enhancer, by
transgenic analysis of LacZ reporter gene expression in mouse embryos.

Selected Publications
Wang S, Ai X, Freeman SD, Pownall ME, Lu Q, Kessler DS, Emerson CP Jr. QSulf1, a heparan sulfate 6-O-endosulfatase, inhibits fibroblast growth factor signaling in mesoderm induction and angiogenesis. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 Apr 6;101(14):4833-8. [abstract]

Emerson, C.P. Jr. and Hauschka, S.D. (2004) Embryonic origins of skeletal muscles. In: Myology (A.G. Engel and C. Franzini-Armstrong, eds.) Vol. 1, third edition, McGraw-Hill, NY. 3-44.

Ai X, Do AT, Lozynska O, Kusche-Gullberg M, Lindahl U, Emerson CP Jr. QSulf1 remodels the 6-O sulfation states of cell surface heparan sulfate proteoglycans to promote Wnt signaling. J Cell Biol. 2003 Jul 21;162(2):341-51. [abstract]

Gustafsson MK, Pan H, Pinney DF, Liu Y, Lewandowski A, Epstein DJ, Emerson CP Jr. Myf5 is a direct target of long-range Shh signaling and Gli regulation for muscle specification. Genes Dev. 2002 Jan 1;16(1):114-26. [abstract]

Dhoot GK, Gustafsson MK, Ai X, Sun W, Standiford DM, Emerson CP Jr. Regulation of Wnt signaling and embryo patterning by an extracellular sulfatase. Science. 2001 Aug 31;293(5535):1663-6. [abstract]

PubMed:
Click here for a list of publications (searches the National Library of Medicine's PubMed database.)