Kenneth Poss

Ken Poss
Ph.D.
Poss in 2018
Born
Green Bay, Wisconsin, U.S.
Alma materCarleton College Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Scientific career
Doctoral advisorSusumu Tonegawa
Other academic advisorsMark Keating
Websitehttps://morgridge.org/research/labs/poss/

Kenneth D. Poss (born 1971 in Green Bay, Wisconsin) is an American biologist and currently director and James W. Neupert Investigator in Regenerative Biology at the Morgridge Institute for Researchand a professor in the department of Cell and Regenerative Biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Career

Poss received a B.A. in Biology from Carleton College (Minnesota) in 1992, and a Ph.D. in Biology in 1998 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology working with Susumu Tonegawa. Poss did postdoctoral research with Mark Keating, first at University of Utah and then at Harvard Medical School. From 2003 to 2024, he led a research program at Duke University investigating zebrafish models of regeneration, where he served as James B. Duke Professor of Regenerative Biology and Head of the Duke University Regeneration Center (Durham, North Carolina). Poss joined the Morgridge Institute for Research in the fall of 2024. He co-founded and served as the first president of the International Society for Regenerative Biology.

Research

Poss uses zebrafish to understand how and why tissue regeneration occurs. As a postdoc, he led the first positional cloning of a gene required for regeneration of amputated fins,[1] and he established zebrafish as a model for innate heart regeneration.[2]  The latter discovery made clear that heart regeneration occurs and is efficient in some vertebrates, and that it could be dissected using molecular genetics using zebrafish a tractable model system. Since then, he and his postdocs, students, and staff have created many tools to interrogate tissue regeneration. 

Poss reported that heart muscle cells, not stem cells, are activated by injury to divide and directly replace lost cardiac tissue.[3]  His lab has a history of research findings on the outer layer of the heart, the epicardium, beginning with discovery of its dynamism upon injury,[4] to its fate-mapping,[5] to its roles in releasing pro-regenerative factors, and to studies describing its own regenerative capacity.[6][7] His group applied Brainbow-based technology to demonstrate that particularly high proliferative activity by a small number of muscle cells, known as clonal dominance, creates the structure of the adult heart.[8]  His lab also identified a key factor important for the process by which zebrafish regenerate spinal cord tissue to reverse a paralyzing injury.[9] His lab also introduced the concept of tissue regeneration enhancer elements (TREEs), sequences that regulate regeneration programs and can be engineered to enhance tissue regeneration,[10][11] and later showed their application in gene therapy strategies for tissue repair.[12]

Awards

Poss was a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, a Pew Scholar, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Early Career Scientist. He received the Established Investigator and Merit Awards from the American Heart Association, the Ruth and A. Morris Williams Faculty Research Prize from Duke University, and the Distinguished Achievement Award from Carleton College. In 2019, Poss was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Selected articles, videos and interviews

References

  1. ^ Poss, Kenneth D.; Shen, Jiaxiang; Nechiporuk, Alex; McMahon, Gerald; Thisse, Bernard; Thisse, Christine; Keating, Mark T. (June 2000). "Roles for Fgf Signaling during Zebrafish Fin Regeneration". Developmental Biology. 222 (2): 347–358. doi:10.1006/dbio.2000.9722. ISSN 0012-1606. PMID 10837124.
  2. ^ Poss, K. D. (2002-12-13). "Heart Regeneration in Zebrafish". Science. 298 (5601): 2188–2190. doi:10.1126/science.1077857. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 12481136. S2CID 7878193.
  3. ^ Kikuchi, Kazu; Holdway, Jennifer E.; Werdich, Andreas A.; Anderson, Ryan M.; Fang, Yi; Egnaczyk, Gregory F.; Evans, Todd; MacRae, Calum A.; Stainier, Didier Y. R. (March 2010). "Primary contribution to zebrafish heart regeneration by gata4+ cardiomyocytes". Nature. 464 (7288): 601–605. doi:10.1038/nature08804. ISSN 0028-0836. PMC 3040215. PMID 20336144.
  4. ^ Lepilina, Alexandra; Coon, Ashley N.; Kikuchi, Kazu; Holdway, Jennifer E.; Roberts, Richard W.; Burns, C. Geoffrey; Poss, Kenneth D. (November 2006). "A Dynamic Epicardial Injury Response Supports Progenitor Cell Activity during Zebrafish Heart Regeneration". Cell. 127 (3): 607–619. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2006.08.052. ISSN 0092-8674. PMID 17081981.
  5. ^ Kikuchi, K.; Gupta, V.; Wang, J.; Holdway, J. E.; Wills, A. A.; Fang, Y.; Poss, K. D. (2011-06-08). "tcf21+ epicardial cells adopt non-myocardial fates during zebrafish heart development and regeneration". Development. 138 (14): 2895–2902. doi:10.1242/dev.067041. ISSN 0950-1991. PMC 3119303. PMID 21653610.
  6. ^ Wang, Jinhu; Cao, Jingli; Dickson, Amy L.; Poss, Kenneth D. (2015-05-04). "Epicardial regeneration is guided by cardiac outflow tract and Hedgehog signalling". Nature. 522 (7555): 226–230. doi:10.1038/nature14325. ISSN 0028-0836. PMC 4494087. PMID 25938716.
  7. ^ Cao, Jingli; Wang, Jinhu; Jackman, Christopher P.; Cox, Amanda H.; Trembley, Michael A.; Balowski, Joseph J.; Cox, Ben D.; De Simone, Alessandro; Dickson, Amy L. (September 2017). "Tension Creates an Endoreplication Wavefront that Leads Regeneration of Epicardial Tissue". Developmental Cell. 42 (6): 600–615.e4. doi:10.1016/j.devcel.2017.08.024. ISSN 1534-5807. PMC 5645043. PMID 28950101.
  8. ^ Gupta, Vikas; Poss, Kenneth D. (April 2012). "Clonally dominant cardiomyocytes direct heart morphogenesis". Nature. 484 (7395): 479–484. doi:10.1038/nature11045. ISSN 0028-0836. PMC 3340018. PMID 22538609.
  9. ^ Mokalled, M. H.; Patra, C.; Dickson, A. L.; Endo, T.; Stainier, D. Y. R.; Poss, K. D. (2016-11-03). "Injury-induced ctgfa directs glial bridging and spinal cord regeneration in zebrafish". Science. 354 (6312): 630–634. doi:10.1126/science.aaf2679. ISSN 0036-8075. PMC 5114142. PMID 27811277.
  10. ^ Kang, Junsu; Hu, Jianxin; Karra, Ravi; Dickson, Amy L.; Tornini, Valerie A.; Nachtrab, Gregory; Gemberling, Matthew; Goldman, Joseph A.; Black, Brian L. (April 2016). "Modulation of tissue repair by regeneration enhancer elements". Nature. 532 (7598): 201–206. doi:10.1038/nature17644. ISSN 0028-0836. PMC 4844022. PMID 27049946.
  11. ^ Goldman, Joseph Aaron; Kuzu, Guray; Lee, Nutishia; Karasik, Jaclyn; Gemberling, Matthew; Foglia, Matthew J.; Karra, Ravi; Dickson, Amy L.; Sun, Fei (February 2017). "Resolving Heart Regeneration by Replacement Histone Profiling". Developmental Cell. 40 (4): 392–404.e5. doi:10.1016/j.devcel.2017.01.013. ISSN 1534-5807. PMC 5367476. PMID 28245924.
  12. ^ Yan, Ruorong; Cigliola, Valentina; Oonk, Kelsey A.; Petrover, Zachary; DeLuca, Sophia; Wolfson, David W.; Vekstein, Andrew; Mendiola, Michelle A.; Devlin, Garth; Bishawi, Muath; Gemberling, Matthew P.; Sinha, Tanvi; Sargent, Michelle A.; York, Allen J.; Shakked, Avraham (2023-01-05). "An enhancer-based gene-therapy strategy for spatiotemporal control of cargoes during tissue repair". Cell Stem Cell. 30 (1): 96–111.e6. doi:10.1016/j.stem.2022.11.012. ISSN 1934-5909. PMC 9830588.
  13. ^ Mercader, Nadia; Serras, Florenci (2018). "Can broken hearts be mended? Ken Poss, a pioneer on heart regeneration research". The International Journal of Developmental Biology. 62 (6–7–8): 383–386. doi:10.1387/ijdb.180088fs. hdl:1854/LU-8646185. ISSN 0214-6282. PMID 29938751.
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