Dr. Ken Hastings focusses on the development, molecular biology, and evolution of muscle. Information gained from his research helps to explain how the various forms of striated muscle cell are generated and maintained in living organisms, and how these cell types originally arose during evolution. His laboratory employs a variety of techniques, including transgenic mice and gene transfer methods, to uncover the molecular genetic mechanisms that guide fibre-type-specific expression in fast and slow skeletal muscle fibres. He also studies the genomic organization and gene expression mechanisms---transcription and RNA splicing---of primitive chordates and simpler vertebrates to understand how the vertebrate genome arose with its complex gene families, including differentially expressed muscle protein gene families.

An experimental focus of particular note is the gene family that encodes the fast-muscle-fiber, slow-muscle-fiber, and heart-specific structural variants of the contractile protein troponin I. By understanding how muscle genes work and how distinct muscle cell types are formed and maintained, Dr. Hastings hopes to generate information that can be used for developing therapeutic approaches for neuromuscular diseases that manipulate or replace cells or genes.

See Publications

E-mail: Kenneth Hastings
Web Site: Hasting Lab