Swetansu Hota, PhD, studies the genetic and molecular mechanisms that produce healthy hearts and brains, and what makes them go awry and cause disease. He focuses on a group of proteins called chromatin remodeling factors, which regulate the activity of genes by loosening or tightening the winding of their DNA. He made the surprising discovery that removing one of these proteins could turn heart cells into brain cells. His work is shedding new light on how cells maintain tissue-specific characteristics, and uncovering shared mechanisms between congenital heart and brain diseases.
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Hota’s research focuses on chromatin structure and remodeling and how these mechanisms help cells maintain tissue-specific characteristics as they mature. Chromatin is the combination of DNA and proteins that wrap the genome into an organized “ball of yarn” that fits inside the cell’s nucleus. To activate specific genes, cells loosen the chromatin surrounding these genes thanks to a combination of proteins known as chromatin remodeling complexes. Hota’s graduate work showed how chromatin remodeling complexes use ATP, the cell’s energy currency, to unwind or rewind DNA, thus making genes more or less likely to be turned on.
As a postdoc working on heart development, he made the surprising discovery that removing one component of the chromatin remodeling complex turned cultured cells normally destined to become heart cells into brain cells. This finding has important implications for our understanding of how gene activity becomes deregulated in cardiovascular disease.
