Jeffrey Boone Miller, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
Apoptosis in neuromuscular biology and disease. Stem cells in adult skeletal muscle. Developmental toxicology: Microarray analyses
Email: miller at bbri.org
Phone: 617.658.7737

Research Summary
We are investigating the functions of cell death regulators, particularly those of the Bcl-2 family, in skeletal muscle using knock-out and transgenic assays, as well as disease models. A long-term goal is to determine if inhibition of apoptosis can ameliorate pathology in particular neuromuscular disease, such as dysferlin-deficiency, laminin-alpha2-deficiency, or dystrophin-deficiency. We also are developing methods to purify adult muscle stem cells to determine the signals that control the growth and differentiation of these stem cells in normal, injured, aging and diseased muscle.
Miller Lab web site.

Selected Publications
Dominov JA, Kravetz AJ, Ardelt M, Kostek CA, Beermann ML, Miller JB. (2005) Muscle-specific BCL2 expression ameliorates muscle disease in laminin {alpha}2-deficient, but not dystrophin-deficient, mice. Hum Mol Genet. 14(8):1029-40.

Girgenrath, M., Kostek, C. A., and Miller, J. B. (2005) Diseased muscles that lack dystrophin or laminin-alpha2 have altered compositions and proliferation of resident stem cells. BMC Neurol. Vol. 5, paper 7 (pp1-10).

Girgenrath M, Dominov JA, Kostek CA, Miller JB. (2004) Inhibition of apoptosis improves outcome in a model of congenital muscular dystrophy. J Clin Invest. 114(11):1635-1639.

Nowak JA, Malowitz J, Girgenrath M, Kostek CA, Kravetz AJ, Dominov JA, Miller JB. (2004) Immortalization of mouse myogenic cells can occur without loss of p16INK4a, p19ARF, or p53 and is accelerated by inactivation of Bax. BMC Cell Biol. 5(1):1.

Miller JB, Emerson CP Jr. (2003) Does the road to muscle rejuvenation go through Notch? Sci Aging Knowledge Environ. (48):pe34.

Lykke-Andersen K, Schaefer L, Menon S, Deng XW, Miller JB, Wei N. (2003) Disruption of the COP9 signalosome Csn2 subunit in mice causes deficient cell proliferation, accumulation of p53 and cyclin E, and early embryonic death. Mol Cell Biol. 23(19):6790-6797.

Pavlath GK, Dominov JA, Kegley KM, Miller JB. (2003) Regeneration of transgenic skeletal muscles with altered timing of expression of the basic helix-loop-helix muscle regulatory factor MRF4. Am J Pathol. 162(5):1685-1691.

Kostek CA, Dominov JA, Miller JB. (2002) Up-regulation of MHC class I expression accompanies but is not required for spontaneous myopathy in dysferlin-deficient SJL/J mice. Am J Pathol. 160(3):833-839.

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