Welcome to Our Lab!

This website has been created to provide visitors with information about our lab. You will be introduced to our research interests, past publications, staff and colleagues, etc. We hope this site will help explain our research goals and let you experience our lab environment.

Research

Our long-term goals are to elucidate the transcriptional regulatory mechanisms of genes involved in vascular diseases and to characterize the signaling pathways coupling these transcriptional programs to the extracellular signals that trigger these diseases. There are three projects that are currently being pursued in the lab.

(1) To characterize the molecular mechanism by which a forkhead transcription factor FOXO4 regulates matrix metalloproteinase and smooth muscle gene expression and phenotypes of smooth muscle cells.

(2) To characterize the molecular mechanism of FOXO4 in regulation of inflammatory gene expression and its role in inflammatory bowel disease and atherosclerosis.

(3) To characterize the signaling pathways that regulate FOXO4 activities.

Recent Publications

Liu ZP, Nakagawa O, Nakagawa M, Yanagisawa H, Passier R, Richardson JA, Srivastava D, Olson EN. "CHAMP, a novel cardiac-specific helicase regulated by MEF2C". Dev Biol. 2001;234:497-509.

Liu ZP, Olson EN. "Suppression of proliferation and cardiomyocyte hypertrophy by CHAMP, a cardiac-specific RNA helicase". Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2002;99:2043-2048.

Shin CH, Liu ZP, Passier R, Zhang CL, Wang DZ, Harris TM, Yamagishi H, Richardson JA, Childs G, Olson EN. "Modulation of cardiac growth and development by HOP, an unusual homeodomain protein". Cell 2002;110:725-735.

Wang D, Passier R, Liu ZP, Shin CH, Wang Z, Li S, Sutherland LB, Small E, Krieg PA, Olson EN. "Regulation of Cardiac Growth and Development by SRF and Its Cofactors". Cold Spring harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, LXVII 2002;1-9.

Liu ZP, Wang Z, Yanagisawa H, Olson EN. "Phenotypic Modulation of Smooth Muscle Cells through Interaction of Foxo4 and Myocardin". Developmental Cell 2005;9:161-270.

Li H, Liang J, Castrillon DH, DePinho RA, Olson EN, Liu Z-P. "Foxo4 regulates TNF?-directed smooth muscle cell migration by activating matrix metalloproteinase 9 gene transcription". Molecular and Cellular Biology. 2007;27:2676-2686.

Contact

Office Information
Address: UTSW Medical Center at Dallas, NB10.222, 6000 Harry Hines Blvd, Dallas, Texas 75390
Telephone: 214-648-1485
Email:liu@arnie.swmed.edu, zhi-ping.liu@utsouthwestern.edu