Dr. Peter Merrifield

Skeletal muscle development, or myogenesis, represents an ideal model system for studying cellular processes such as cell migration, cell signaling, cell cycle regulation and cell differentiation. Understanding myogenesis is extremely important, since myoD -/-, myf5 -/- deficient mice which lack normal muscle development die at birth, and mutant mice lacking muscle specific stem cells (or satellite cells) cannot regenerate muscle in response to injury.