Home Department: undeclared
Mentor: Casey Gifford (Pediatrics - Cardiology)

“Identifying Vital Enhancers for Faithful Cardiovascular Development”

The goal of the project is to identify the important enhancers that are necessary for accurate cardiovascular development. To this end, Jennifer is focusing on enhancer RNA (eRNA), a reliable indicator of functional enhancers, to give her insight into the activity of relevant transcription factors. She is producing both wildtype and mutant variants of three cardiovascular cell types by stem cell differentiation and compare their eRNA landscapes through sequencing. If successful, this work will ultimately help us understand how mutations in transcription factors lead to congenital heart disease.