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MINCHIN LAB

ADIPOSE TISSUE BIOLOGY & DISEASE

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James Minchin - Group leader

James was an American Heart Association-funded Postdoctoral Fellow in the Rawls lab at Duke University (NC, USA), before joining the Centre for Cardiovascular Science as an independent group leader in late 2016. Whilst in the Rawls lab, James helped to develop zebrafish as a model to study adipose biology and has continued this research interest in Edinburgh.


Panna Tandon - Postdoctoral researcher

Panna was an American Heart Association-funded Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dr Frank Conlon at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (NC, USA). Panna moved with James to Edinburgh in 2016 and has focussed on understanding how neuronal patterning regulates energy homeostasis and susceptibility to obesity.

Lab publications:

  • Human Semaphorin 3 variants link development of melanocortin circuits and energy homeostasis. Agatha A. van der Klaauw*, Sophie Croizier*, Edson Mendes de Oliveira, Lukas K.J. Stadler, Soyoung Park, Youxin Kong, Matthew C. Banton, Panna Tandon, Audrey E. Hendricks, Julia M. Keogh, Susanna E. Riley, Sofia Papadia, Elana Henning, Rebecca Bounds, Elena G. Bochukova, Vanisha Mistry, Stephen O’Rahilly, Richard B. Simerly, INTERVAL, UK10K consortium, James E.N. Minchin, Inês Barroso, E. Yvonne Jones, Sebastien G. Bouret^, I. Sadaf Farooqi^. Cell. 2019 In Press.

  • Adipose morphology and metabolic disease. Tandon P, Wafer R, Minchin JEN^. Journal of Experimental Biology. 2018 Mar 7;221(Pt Suppl 1). doi: 10.1242/jeb.164970. PMID: 29514883

  • The Role of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor Gamma (PPARG) in Adipogenesis: Applying Knowledge from the Fish Aquaculture Industry to Biomedical Research. Wafer R, Tandon P, Minchin JEN^. Frontiers in Endocrinology. 2017 May 22;8:102. doi: 10.3389/fendo.2017.00102. PMID: 28588550

Selected other publications (* = joint first author, ^ = corresponding author):

  • Expanding the genetic toolkit in Xenopus: Approaches and opportunities for human disease modeling. Tandon P^, Conlon F, Furlow JD, Horb ME. Developmental Biology. 2017 Jun 15;426(2):325-335. doi: 10.1016/j.ydbio.2016.04.009. PMID: 27109192

  • The Lhx9-integrin pathway is essential for positioning of the proepicardial organ. Tandon P^, Wilczewski CM, Williams CE, Conlon FL. Development. 2016 Mar 1;143(5):831-40. doi: 10.1242/dev.129551. PMID: 26811386

  • Identifying Regulators of Morphogenesis Common to Vertebrate Neural Tube Closure and Caenorhabditis elegans Gastrulation. Sullivan-Brown JL, Tandon P, Bird KE, Dickinson DJ, Tintori SC, Heppert JK, Meserve JH, Trogden KP, Orlowski SK, Conlon FL, Goldstein B. Genetics. 2016 Jan;202(1):123-39. doi: 10.1534/genetics.115.183137. PMID: 26434722

  • A distinct mechanism of vascular lumen formation in Xenopus requires EGFL7. Charpentier MS, Tandon P, Trincot CE, Koutleva EK, Conlon FL. PLoS One. 2015 Feb 23;10(2):e0116086. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0116086. PMID: 25705891

  • RNA-seq in the tetraploid Xenopus laevis enables genome-wide insight in a classic developmental biology model organism. Amin NM, Tandon P, Osborne Nishimura E, Conlon FL. Methods. 2014 Apr 1;66(3):398-409. doi: 10.1016/j.ymeth.2013.06.009. PMID: 23792920

  • Tcf21 regulates the specification and maturation of proepicardial cells. Tandon P, Miteva YV, Kuchenbrod LM, Cristea IM, Conlon FL. Development. 2013 Jun;140(11):2409-21. doi: 10.1242/dev.093385. PMID: 23637334

  • ROCKs cause SHP-wrecks and broken hearts. Tandon P, Conlon FL, Taylor JM. Small GTPases. 2012 Oct-Dec;3(4):209-12. doi: 10.4161/sgtp.20960. PMID: 22858643

  • SHP-2 acts via ROCK to regulate the cardiac actin cytoskeleton. Langdon Y*, Tandon P*, Paden E, Duddy J, Taylor JM, Conlon FL. Development. 2012 Mar;139(5):948-57. doi: 10.1242/dev.067579. PMID: 22278918

  • Morpholino injection in Xenopus. Tandon P, Showell C, Christine K, Conlon FL. Methods in Molecular Biology. 2012;843:29-46. doi: 10.1007/978-1-61779-523-7_4. PMID: 22222519

  • Xenopus: An emerging model for studying congenital heart disease. Kaltenbrun E, Tandon P, Amin NM, Waldron L, Showell C, Conlon FL. Birth Defects Res A Clin Mol Teratol. 2011 Jun;91(6):495-510. doi: 10.1002/bdra.20793. PMID: 21538812


Rebecca Wafer - PhD student

Rebecca graduated from the University of Sheffield in 2016 and shortly after joined the Minchin lab as a British Heart Foundation-funded PhD student. Rebecca has utilized genome-wide association data to identify new candidate genes that influence subcutaneous adipose levels. Rebecca has developed extensive new zebrafish reagents to help model the role of these genes using real-time in vivo imaging.

Lab publications:

  • Adipose morphology and metabolic disease. Tandon P, Wafer R, Minchin JEN^. Journal of Experimental Biology. 2018 Mar 7;221(Pt Suppl 1). doi: 10.1242/jeb.164970. PMID: 29514883

  • The Role of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor Gamma (PPARG) in Adipogenesis: Applying Knowledge from the Fish Aquaculture Industry to Biomedical Research. Wafer R, Tandon P, Minchin JEN^. Frontiers in Endocrinology. 2017 May 22;8:102. doi: 10.3389/fendo.2017.00102. PMID: 28588550


Loes Elemans - PhD student

Loes graduated from Utrecht University in 2016 and joined the lab in 2018 as part of the British Heart Foundation PhD program in Cardiovascular Science. Loes is currently looking at how a family of transcription factors regulate the self-renewal and maintenance capacity of adipose progenitors. Loes is using ChIP-Seq in mammalian cell cultures and in vivo modelling in zebrafish.


Katy McDonald - MScR student

Katy graduated from Durham University in 2018 and is part of the Biomedical Science MScR program at the University of Edinburgh. Katy is using new zebrafish mutants to study how ageing leads to degeneration of subcutaneous adipose tissues.


Aki Karas - Intercalating Medical student

Aki is an intercalating Medical student who joined the lab in January 2019 and is studying how neuronal patterning regulates energy homeostasis and susceptibility to obesity.


Alumni:

Jason Lam (now a PhD student in the lab of Professor Matthew Collin, University of Newcastle)

Rosalyn Fong (now a student at the University of Edinburgh Medical School)

Susanna Riley (now a PhD student on the Wellcome Trust Tissue Repair program, University of Edinburgh)

Iris Prunonosa Cervera (now a PhD student in the lab of Professor Nik Morton, University of Edinburgh)

Matthew Sinton (now a PhD student in the lab of Dr Mandy Drake, University of Edinburgh)

The Minchin lab is part of the Centre for Cardiovascular Science at the University of Edinburgh