Meet Federica Accornero, PhD, associate professor of molecular biology, cell biology, and biochemistry.
➡️ What brought you to Brown?
I’ve been at
@brownu since July 1, 2023. The Brown RNA Center opened this past fall, and part of those expansion efforts by Dean Mukesh K. Jain, MD, included my recruitment from
@theohiostateuniversity . Specifically, I study cardiac and skeletal muscle pathologies and look at gene expressions, especially the role of RNA and RNA modifications in regulating organ function. The investment by Brown on RNA makes this one of the most exciting places for my studies.
I received my PhD in 2007 from the
@unitorino in Italy, where I’m originally from, and trained as a postdoctoral fellow in an HHMI laboratory at
@cincychildrens .
➡️ What are some of your current projects or ongoing research?
We mimic cardiovascular disease using mouse models and we use approaches with gene therapy to see how we can help the
#heart cope with stress. Stress for us can be a model of hypertension or a metabolic type of
#stress through different types of
#diet . We also look at how viral infections affect the heart. In addition, we study skeletal muscle plasticity by looking at the mechanisms responsible for muscle wasting during aging as well the processes regulating overload-induced muscle growth.
➡️ Why does this research matter?
#CardiovascularDisease is the leading cause of death worldwide so there is a clear clinical need for understanding how we can protect the heart and maintain its function. In the past decades, people have examined what genes are expressed in the heart, but those expressions per se don’t tell us enough information about how the cells in the heart really work. If we understand how these genes are regulated after they are expressed, we can learn a lot of new information. In particular we are looking at
#RNA modifications, as once RNA is produced it can be modified and can affect protein synthesis. With these modifications we can understand what is the final outcome of the gene expression program beyond what is encoded in
#DNA and we could potentially find previously unknown ways to regulate heart function.
