Kenneth Poss, PhD

Organ System/Disease Focus:

Tissue Regeneration: Cardiovascular, Appendages, Spinal Cord

Aligned Research Focus:

Regenerative biology: basic science and applications

Research Description:

How and why tissue regeneration does (or does not) occur are critical questions. The biology of regeneration remains both challenging and fascinating, and new discoveries have the potential to impact clinical outcomes of many diseases of organ damage, including heart failure, Alzheimer’s disease, and diabetes.

It has been known for centuries that salamanders and fish regenerate complex tissues much more effectively than mammals. Zebrafish have emerged as a central model system for studying regeneration, due to their ability to regenerate myriad tissues and to the availability of molecular genetic tools. Over the past 2 decades, our laboratory has spearheaded the use of zebrafish to reveal concepts and mechanisms of regeneration.

We study the initial morphogenesis and injury-induced regeneration of several tissues in zebrafish. Our student and postdoc projects investigate regeneration of heart, fins, spinal cord, skin, scales, kidney, and other tissues. We have also begun to test ideas in mammalian models.

Selected References:

Kang, J., Hu, J., Karra, R., Dickson, A. L., Tornini, V. A., Nachtrab, G., Gemberling, M., Goldman, J. A., Black, B. L., and Poss, K. D. (2016). Modulation of tissue repair by regeneration enhancer elements. Nature 532, 201-206. PMCID: PMC4844022.

Sun, F., Ou, J., Shoffner, A. R., Luan, Y., Yang, H., Song, L., Safi, A., Cao, J., Yue, F., Crawford, G. E., and Poss, K. D. (2022). Enhancers differentiate local and remote injury responses during regeneration. Nature Cell Biology 24, 685-696. PMCID: PMC9107506.

Yan, R., Cigliola, V., Oonk, K. A., Petrover, Z., DeLuca, S., Wolfson, D. W., Vekstein, A., Mendiola, M. A. Devlin, G., Bishawi, M., Gemberling, M. P., Sinha, T., Sargent, M. A., York, A. J., Shakked, A., DeBenedittis, P., Wendell, D. C., Ou, J., Kang, J., Goldman, J. A., Baht, G. S., Karra, R., Williams, A. R., Bowles, D. E., Asokan, A., Tzahor, E., Gersbach, C. A., Molkentin, J. D., Bursac, N., Black, B. L., and Poss, K. D. (2023). An enhancer-based gene therapy strategy for spatiotemporal control of cargoes during tissue repair. Cell Stem Cell 30, 96-111. PMCID: PMC9830588.

Cigliola, V., Shoffner, A., Lee, N., Ou, J., Gonzalez, T. J., Hoque, J., Becker, C. J., Han, Y., Shen, G., Faw, T. D., Abd-El-Barr, M. M., Varghese, S., Asokan, A., and Poss, K. D. (2023). Spinal cord repair is modulated by the neurogenic factor Hb-egf under direction of a regeneration-associated enhancer. Nature Communications 14(1):4857. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-40486-5. PMCID: PMC10421883

Ando, K., Ou, J., Thompson, J. D., Welsby, J., Bangru, S., Shen, J., Wei, X., Diao, Y., and Poss, K. D. (2024). A screen for regeneration-associated silencer regulatory elements in zebrafish. Developmental Cell 59, 676-691. PMCID: PMC10939760.