Dr. Eldad Tzahor

For the past few years, our lab has been focusing on the identification of candidate signaling molecules and tissue-specific transcription factors that regulate cardiac and skeletal muscle formation during early vertebrate embryogenesis. During that time, our studies have yielded important new insights into the processes underlying head muscle development.1-5 In particular, our findings provided valuable support for the current theory that the development of the head musculature differs profoundly from that of trunk myogenesis.2,4 We identified extrinsic signaling pathways that regulate, both positively and negatively, the patterning and differentiation of cranial paraxial mesoderm.1-4 We also revealed that head muscles are developmentally linked to cardiac formation.1, 3, 5