{"id":20,"date":"2013-02-26T20:37:53","date_gmt":"2013-02-26T20:37:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu\/template\/?page_id=20"},"modified":"2014-08-26T16:01:21","modified_gmt":"2014-08-26T16:01:21","slug":"research","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu\/chenizu\/research\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Interests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cardiac arrhythmias, Heart failure, Ca2+ signaling system, Ion channels, Quantitative modeling of biological systems.<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong>The rhythm and the strength of heart beats are controlled by three dynamic systems in cardiac cells: (1) the electrical system, (2) the Ca2+ signaling system, and (3) the contractile system.\u00a0 In a cardiac cycle, the electric excitation of cardiac muscle cell triggers an increase of the cytosolic Ca2+ concentration, which causes the muscle to contract;\u00a0 the Ca2+ is then sequestered or removed from the cytosol, then the muscle relaxes.\u00a0 My research seeks to\u00a0 \u00a0understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms that control these dynamic systems and hence govern the cardiac function in health and disease.My current work focuses on the hypertension-induced heart diseases.\u00a0 High blood pressure is a major risk factor for cardiac hypertrophy, arrhythmias and heart failure.\u00a0 So far, the main treatment strategy is to use anti-hypertensive drugs to lower the blood pressure.\u00a0 However, 30-33% of the treated patients still have the blood pressure higher than the recommended level of 140\/90 mmHg.\u00a0 Hence finding new effective treatment for hypertension-induced heart diseases is of great importance.\u00a0 Recently, we found that the onset of hypertension is associated with an increase of the activity of an important signaling molecule in the heart, the Ca2+-calmodulin-dependent kinase II (CaMKII).\u00a0 Previous studies show that CaMKII plays a key role in modulating cardiac function and regulating heart disease development.\u00a0 One of our NIH funded projects is to test the potential of using CaMKII inhibitor as a new therapeutic strategy for treating hypertension-induced heart diseases.In our Cardiac Signaling Lab, we have gathered a group of researchers (link to website: Cardiac Signaling Lab) with complimentary expertise using multidisciplinary approach to study the complex dynamic systems that control the cardiac function and heart diseases.\u00a0 Our unique strength comes from closely combining experimental studies with realistic quantitative modeling.\u00a0 The major techniques we use include electrophysiology, confocal microscopy, Ca2+ measurement using fluorescence indicators, biochemistry and molecular biology methods, and large scale super computer simulations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cardiac arrhythmias, Heart failure, Ca2+ signaling system, Ion channels, Quantitative modeling of biological systems. The rhythm and the strength of heart beats are controlled by three dynamic systems in cardiac cells: (1) the electrical system, (2) the Ca2+ signaling system, and (3) the contractile system.\u00a0 In a cardiac cycle, the \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu\/chenizu\/research\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-twocolumns-left.php","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-20","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu\/chenizu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu\/chenizu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu\/chenizu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu\/chenizu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu\/chenizu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu\/chenizu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu\/chenizu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/20\/revisions\/256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu\/chenizu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}