Timeline of Past News

2025

January 2025: We hosted the kick-off event for the Cardiovascular PhD Programme @AU Health. January 2025: Virginia presented her data from her project at the 2025 PhD Day at Aarhus University. January 2025: We received support from the Danish Cardiovascular Academy for a research visit to the lab of Prof. Katja Gehmlich at the University of Birmingham, UK.

2024

October 2024: Virginia and Jon attend the 2024 World Muscle Society meeting in Prague to present their current work on Cullin-3. September 2024: Rob presents data on his project at the 2024 British Society for Cardiovascular Research meeting at the University of Salford in Manchester, UK, and the 2024 meeting of the European Muscle Conference (EMC) in Ljubljana, Slovenia. August 2024: Our PhD students Lena and Madison attend the 2024 Nordoc Summer School "Future Expertise in Health Sciences" in Helsinki, Finland and present their research in a poster presentation. The annual Nordic PhD Summer School brings PhD students from the Nordics together for two days of interaction and scientific discussions. July 2024: We published a new review summarizing "The challenges of assessing adiposity in a clinical setting" in Nature Reviews Endocrinology. June 2024: We are establishing a new Cardiovascular PhD programme at Aarhus University, which will be integrated into the Graduate Program @ Health. More information on the programme can be found here June 2024: Virginia receives a Aage and Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond Scholarship to perform work at UC San Diego. June 2024: Lena presented her data in a poster at the International Society for Heart Research Meeting 2024 in Toulouse, France. May 2024: Jon Herskind receives a grant from the Knud Højgaards Fond to attend the World Muscle Society meeting later this year in Prague and present his work. April 2024: We presented our data at the Membranes Research Day at Aarhus University and the Danish Cardiovascular Academy International Summit on Clinical Research in Heart Failure 2024. March 2024: Congratulations to Virginia Fochi and Lena Nielsen, who both received a Helga og Peter Kornings Fond grant to support their PhDs! February 2024: Saying 'farewell' and 'thank you for the hard work' to Kyohei Fujita, who took up a position as Assistant Professor at Tokyo Women's Medical University Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science. Congratulations on the new position! February 2024: Rob presents data on his project at the 2024 Winter Meeting of the Danish Cardiovascular Academy. January 2024: Our PhD students Virginia Fochi and Lena Nielsen attend the Annual PhD day at AU. January 2024: We published a review on "Metabolic Flexibility of the Heart: The Role of Fatty Acid Metabolism in Health, Heart Failure, and Cardiometabolic Diseases" published here

2023

November 2023: Presenting our data (with a little help) at the Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus Seminar Series. October 2023: Virginia and Jon attending a Python Image Analysis Workshop at the University of Copenhagen. September 2023: Virginia is presenting her first poster on structural changes to Cullin-3 knockout muscles at the 2023 European Muscle Conference in Florence, Italy. July/August 2023: We presented our work on cardiac functions of Obsl1 and Obscurin at the 2023 American Heart Association Basic Cardiovscular Science Conference in Boston. June 2023: We published a follow-up manuscript to the COVID-19 PhD education impact survey in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education. This study compares the impact of the pandemic on PhD programs in the US and Sweden. How was the science, graduation, life and future of PhD students affected by COVID-19; and what were differences between how Swedish universities and universities in the US handled the pandemic. Read all about it at here. June 2023: Kyohei wins the 2023 UC San Diego Schulman Award for Cardiovascular Research! Congratulations and a big thank you to all collaborators who helped his research along the way! May 2023: Congratulations to Kyohei, who presented data on the phenotype of the cardiac specific Obscurin/Obsl1 double knockout at the 2023 Cardiovascular Bioengineering (CVBE) Symposium in Kyoto Japan, and received an Abstract Award at the conference. May 2023: We and collaborators are presenting several poster at the 2023 Steno Diabetes Center Retreat. Great interactions with new collegues and a beautiful place to hold the retreat at the Mols Bjerge National Park. May 2023: Kyohei presents data at the 10th Annual Fellows research Day at the UC San Diego Department of Cardiology. January-April 2023: We are starting up the new laboratory at the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University and the Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus and welcome lab manager Jeppe Høegh Kallesøe, Bachelors student Brigita Medelyte and PhD student Virginia Fochi to the team!

2022

December 2022: We have a new picture of the lab at UC San Diego. We welcomed Dr. Virginia Actis-Dato who starts her postdoctoral position in collaboration with Dr. Yoshitake Cho. October 2022: Very excited to share data on the Obscurin x Obsl1 double knockout mouse model at the 2022 EMBO metabolism workshop in Malaga! Great work by Dr. Fujita and our collaborators. October 2022: After 15+ years at at UC San Diego, I am excited to announce that the lab will transition to the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University. We will continue our quest to discover molecular mechanisms for sk.muscle and heart development, and for the aetiology of myopathies in both places, at UC San Diego and Aarhus University. Join the team in Aarhus: seeking postdocs & PhD students starting from 2023 onwards. September 2022: Kyohei presents the obscurin/Obsl1 double knockout model of diastolic heart failure at the 70th Annual Scientific Session of the Japanese College of Cardiology in Kyoto, Japan. September 2022: Our preprint describing how ‘combined loss of obscurin and obscurin-like 1 in murine hearts results in diastolic dysfunction, altered metabolism and deregulated mitophagy’ is finally out at BioRxiv. September 2022: Presenting our data on the obscurin/Obsl1 double knockout as new diastolic dysfunction heart failure model in comparison to the 'two-hit' model of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction at the 2022 'Metabolism in Action' Conference. August 2022: We have a new picture of the lab with collaborators and friends. July 2022: Our Obscn & Obsl1 gene targeted mice 🐭 are now available at Jackson Laboratories. A great tool for skeletal muscle and cardiac research. Follow the links for more info on the Obscurin and Obsl1 lines. We are also working on a new manuscript detailing Obscn/Obsl1 function for hearts #preprint #ComingSoon. June 2022: Our new collaborative manuscript on adipose tissue inflammation and cardiometabolic disease with the Borgeson lab @Unversity of Gothenburg is out in iScience. June 2022: We presented data at the ISHR meeting in Berlin, Germany. Madison Clark won a poster award for her work. May 2022: Madison Clark successfully defended her collaborative Masters Thesis with the group of Assoc. Prof. Borgeson at the University of Gothenburg. Congratulations! January 2022: We contributed to a collaborative manuscript from the group of Prof. Sorrentino on obscurin functions in skeletal muscles.

2021

September 2021: Check out our new review article on the titin N2B and N2A regions as biomechanical and metabolic signaling hubs in cross-striated muscles published in Biophysical Reviews. May 2021: Something entirely different from the usual projects in the lab: We looked at challenges to the education of PhD students at universities in Sweden due to COVID-19. The accepted manuscript is now available at BMC Medical Education. April 2021: We collaborated with the Sheikh Lab at UC San Diego to uncover cardiac functions of the Cop9 Signalosome unit Csn6. The manuscript was recently published at the Journal of Clinical Investigations (JCI). April 2021: We have a new collaborative manuscript describing the structure of titin Ig81-83 availabe at the Journal of General Physiology. March 2021: Discover our new manuscript that explores obscurin and SPEG kinase biology. The open access article is published here. Another paper with a fantastic team of collaborators- Dr. Fleming at the University of Konstanz and the Borgeson lab at the University of Gothenburg. February 2021: New manuscript on Ankrd1/Carp1 binding to titin N2a and filamentous actin; published in the Journal of Molecular Biology. Great collaborative effort with the labs of Olga Mayans, Wolfgang Linke, Michael Kovermann, Belinda Bullard, Ju Chen and Emma Borgeson.

2020

October 2020: Read our new review on the role of cullin-RING ligases for the development and function of cross-striated muscles. The open access article is published here. September 2020: We presented data on the role of obscurin proteins for cardiac health at a symposium in Bern, Switzerland. September 2020: We attended the virtual Keystone Symposium on Proteomics in Cell Biology and Disease. We featured our work on cardiac phospho-proteomics and its role in the development of dilated cardiomyopathy. July 2020: Our work combatting Dilated Cardiomyopathy is featured in the Saltman Quarterly. March-June 2020: Keeping the lab going in times of social distancing. January 2020: We are grateful to have received major funding from the Muscular Dystrophy Association to organize the 2020 AMC Meeting. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we were unfortunately forced to cancel the meeting.

2019

October 2019: New collaborative manuscript: 'Comparative analysis of obesity-related cardiometabolic and renal biomarkers in human plasma and serum' was just published at Scientific Reports. The full manuscript can be found here. October 2019: Visiting the Sorrentino Lab at the University of Siena to talk about the obscurin project. September 2019: New manuscript: 'miR-486 is modulated by stretch and increases ventricular growth' was just published in JCI Insight. The full manuscript can be found here. September 2019: We presented data on the the Nemaline Myopathy project at the Society for Muscle Biology Conference. September 2019: We are attending the European Muscle Conference in Canterbury to present data on cardiac and skeletal muscle functions of obscurin proteins. September 2019: It was great being back at King's College London to present the latest data on our project on obscurin and Obsl1 roles for cardiac function. August 2019: Andrea Biju, our AHA@UCSD undergraduate researcher presented her data at this years UCSD Summer Research Conference. July 2019: It was great to present the latest data on one of our myopathy projects @AbilityLab in Chicago. Fantastic environment and inspiring collaborators. June 2019: Welcoming this years American Heart Association undergraduate summer research fellows for 8 weeks of intense hands-on lab experience. June 2019: Presenting data on the cardiac roles of obscurin and Obsl1 at this years ISHR World Congress in Beijing, China. May 2019: We published a new manuscript that highlights the role of obscurin and Obsl1 for skeletal muscle development. The article can be found at Communications Biology. April 2019: New manuscript on the role that Cullin3 E3-ligase function plays for the development of nemaline myopathy in mice and patients. The manuscript can be found at JCI Insight. April 2019: Kavya presented her work at the Stanford Research Conference 2019. In addition, she got accepted into the prestigious COMET Fellowship program at Stanford. Congrats! February 2019: The review article on the role of PKC and PKN protein kinases for cardiac development, function and the etiology of cardiomyopathies is now available at Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology (JMCC). February 2019: Our review article on M-band functions is now available online at BBA-Molecular Cell Research. January 2019: We presented our work on obscurin protein family functions at the Max Delbruck Zentrum in Berlin and Sahlgrenska Hospital/Gothenburg University.

2018

December 2018: We presented two posters at this years ASCB Conference in San Diego. October 2018: We presented data at the 2018 World Muscle Society Congress in Mendoza, Argentina. October 2018: We hosted and presented data at the 2018 Alternative Muscle Club Meeting. September 2018: We presented data at the 2018 Atheroma Club Meeting in Ystad, Sweden. August 2018: Contributing to a manuscript that investigates the role of a human mutation in the muscle lim protein MLP in cardiomyopathy development. June 2018: We presented data on the 'Role of cullin-3 for normal skeletal muscle development' project at the 2018 New Directions in Biology and Disease of Skeletal Muscle Conference. May 2018: Jordan receives a fellowship to present data at the 23rd International Congress of the World Muscle Society in October 2018. May 2018: We presented data at the San Diego Muscle Research Center Seminar Series and the 2018 Myofilament Conference. March 2018: We are excited to host undergraduate researchers Madison Clark and Jim Nguyen in the summer of 2018 during their research fellowships from the AHA and the UC San Diego Julia Brown Research Scholarship for Medical Research.

2017

December 2017: We presented data on the role of cullin-3 for muscle development at this years ASCB meeting in Philadelphia. November 2017: Jordan's work on Nemaline Myopathy is highlighted on the Muscular Dystrophy Association website. September 2017: We organized the 2017 AMC meeting. More information and pictures here. September 2017: Farewell to five extraordinary AHA summer research fellows after 10 weeks of research in this and other cardiology labs. August 2017: Summer students Kavya and Matt present their data at the 2017 UC-San Diego Summer Research Conference August 2017: Patrick presents data at the 2017 UC-San Diego Symposium on "Integrative Bioengineering of Heart Vessels and Blood" July 2017: Contributing to a manuscript that investigates the role of the co-chaperone BAG3 in the cardiomyocytes protein quality control system. July 2017: The AMC meeting in September is supported by a grant from the American Society for Cell Biology. July 2017: Jordan receives a Development Grant from the Muscular Dystrophy Association. June 2017: Welcoming the 2017 AHA Summer Undergraduate Research Program Fellows to UC San Diego. May 2017: Undergraduate researchers Kavya Tallapaka and Matthew Wright receive the UC San Diego Chancellor’s Research Summer Undergraduate Research Award for Science and Engineering and the AHA@UCSD Summer Undergraduate Scholarship, respectively, to work on projects in the laboratory. May 2017: Valeria and Patrick presented their data at the Annual Cardiology Fellows' Research Day at UC San Diego. April 2017: Mark your calendars for the next AMClub meeting in San Diego. Meeting date: September 22nd, 2017. February 2017: New article outlining crucial functions of cullin E3-ligases for muscle formation published in the Journal of Molecular Biology. February 2017: Patrick presented a poster on obscurin protein functions at the Biophysics Conference in New Orleans. January 2017: AHA undergraduate fellowships available. More information here: AHA@UCSD.

2016

December 2016: Jordan presented a poster on the importance of muscle protein turnover at the ASCB meeting in San Francisco. October 2016: We presented data at the UCSD Cardiovascular Science Conference and the SDMRC seminar series. October 2016: Contributing to an article on obscurin function published in AJP-Cell Physiology. September 2016: Contributing to an article on titin I-band pathomechanism published in Open Biology. September 2016: Green Lab Certified. We aim to do sustainable research to preserve the planets resources. More information can be found at GreenLabs@UCSD and my green lab. September 2016: Our lab presented data at the Alternative Muscle Club Meeting 2016. August 2016: We presented some of our data on the DCM project at Karolinska Institutet. August 2016: Lauren presented some data at the Summer Research Conference. July 2016: New article on muscle ankyrin repeat protein functions for dilated cardiomyopathy development published in Nature Communications. June 2016: We presented data on the obscurin project at a one day satellite workshop at Loyola University Chicago. May 2016: Paige successfully defends her Masters Thesis on Cullin-Ring ligase functions for muscle differentiation. May 2016: Lauren receives a 2016 Ledell Science and Engineering Undergraduate Research Scholarship to work on a summer project in the lab. April 2016: We presented some of our data at the 2016 ISHR conference. April 2016: Lauren presented some of our data at the 2016 UCSD Undergrad Research Conference. April 2016: Announcing the 2016 AMC Meeting in San Diego.

2015

December 2015: We presented data at the 2015 ASCB conference. November 2015: Lauren presented her data at the FISP symposium. November 2015: We will present data on obscurin functions at the ASCB 2015 meeting. September 2015: Jordan receives a Poster Award for his research at the EMC 2015. September 2015: We presented data at the European Muscle Conference 2015 in Warsaw, Poland. September 2015: We presented our work at the Alternative Muscle Club Meeting in Tucson, AZ. June 2015: Contributing to a manuscript on cypher and ENH protein function for cardiac development. June 2015: Lauren Waller receives a fellowship to present some of our data at this years UC Systemwide Bioengineering Symposium. June 2015: We presented some of our data on obscurin protein functions in heart at this years ISHR meeting in Seattle. May 2015: Undergraduate Researcher Nour Marogy receives the 2015 Ledell Family Science and Engineering Undergraduate Research Scholarship to work on a project in the lab. April 2015: Undergraduate Researchers Paige Shapiro, Lauren Waller and Stephanie Myers present our work at the UCSD undergraduate conference. Here are the photos. April 2015: Undergraduate Researcher Stephanie Myers receives a EUREKA! Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. March 2015: Contributing the chapter "How to maintain a working heart - Waste Disposal and Recycling in Cardiomyocytes" to the book "Cardiac Cytoarchitecture". March 2015: Contributing to an editorial on Cathepsin functions: "Cathepsins in Heart Disease - Chewing on the Heartache?". February 2015: Jordan Blondelle receives a Philippe Foundation PostDoc Fellowship. February 2015: Undergraduate Researcher Lauren Waller receives a Frontiers of Innovation Scholars Undergraduate Fellowship to work on a project in collaboration with Dr. McCulloch in the Dept. of Bioengineering.

2014

December 2014: Contributing to an article on biomechanical stretch in cardiomyocytes. Read the article here. November 2014: Undergraduate Researchers presented their work at this years SCCUR meeting. More information in the lab blog. November 2014: Launching the San Diego Muscle Research Center homepage and the Research Resources Wiki-Page. October 2014: We presented data on muscle ankyrin repeat protein functions at a San Diego Muscle Research Center Seminar. October 2014: We presented data at the Frontiers of Proteomics Research Symposium at UC San Diego. August 2014: New article on muscle ankyrin repeat protein functions. Read the article here. August 2014: Stephanie Myers, Paige Shapiro and Lauren Waller presented data from their undergraduate research project at this years Alternative Muscle Club Meeting in San Diego. August 2014: Stephanie Myers presented our data at the UCSD Summer Research Conference. August 2014: We are working on the next Alternative Muscle Club Meeting in San Diego. Meeting Date: Friday, August 29. 2014. July 2014: Contributing to a postdoc career seminar on the K99/R00 application process at UC San Diego. June 2014: Stephanie Myers presented data at the UCSD Biology Student Research Showcase 2014. May 2014: We presented our data at the ISHR meeting in Miami, Florida. April 2014: Undergraduate Researcher Paige Shapiro receives the Ledell Family Research Scholarship to work on a project in the lab. April 2014: Undergraduate Researcher Stephanie Myers receives the Doris A. Howell Scholarship to work on a project in the lab. March 2014: Contributing to a 'letter to the editors' on HMERF disease etiology February 2014: We presented a poster at the Biophysics Conference in San Francisco. January 2014: Article on muscle ankyrin repeat protein functions accepted in 'Anatomical Records'. More details coming soon.