Welcome to the Greenberg Lab

Our lab is interested in understanding molecular motors and their roles in health and disease. We are particularly interested in cardiovascular diseases, including heart failure and familial cardiomyopathies.  We are interested in understanding the mechanisms driving these diseases and leveraging these mechanistic insights into the development of precision medicine therapeutics. To do this, the lab uses an array of biochemical, biophysical, cell biological, computational, and engineering techniques to decipher how disease-causing perturbations affect contractility across scales from the level of single molecules to the level of engineered tissues. For more details on our research, click here.

New Greenberg lab publication looking at the mechanics and kinetics of cardiac myosin working stroke

This work, lead by first authors Sarah Clippinger-Schulte and Brent Scott, shows that regulatory proteins in cardiac muscle act via a steric blocking mechanism at physiological ATP concentrations. These proteins do not affect myosin’s mechanics or load...

New Greenberg lab collaborative publication with the Geeves and Leinwand labs

The Greenberg lab has a new collaborative publication with the Geeves and Leinwand labs.  We examined mutations in the myosin MYH7b associated with hearing loss.  The paper includes optical trapping by Dr. Samantha Barrick using our new fast feedback system designed...

Congratulations Brent!

Brent Scott was appointed to the Pediatric Cardiopulmonary T32.

New Greenberg lab publication

In collaboration with the Lin and Stitziel labs, we applied our biophysical tools to study a de novo variant found in a patient with heart failure.  We show how these tools can be used to provide insights into the potential pathogenicity of rare variants and harnessed...

New Greenberg lab publication

In collaboration with the Leinwand and Bowman labs, we show that the dynamics of myosin play a critical role in determining drug specificity.  The paper can be found here.  Congratulations to all of the...

New Greenberg lab preprint looking at how the cardiac myosin working stroke is modulated by the thin filament

Human heart contraction is powered by the molecular motor β-cardiac myosin, which pulls on thin filaments consisting of actin and the regulatory proteins troponin and tropomyosin. In some muscle and non-muscle systems, these regulatory proteins tune the kinetics,...

New Greenberg Lab publication in collaboration with the Geeves, Bowman, and Leinwand labs

Here, we examined how the sarcomeric myosin MYH7b is structurally, mechanically, and kinetically tuned for its unique role in specialized muscles. Publication can be found here....

New collaborative preprint between the Greenberg, Bowman, and Leinwand labs examining the how drugs target specific myosin isoforms.

Specific myosin isoforms have emerged as drug targets in diseases including heart failure, cancer, muscle diseases, and parasitic infections; however, targeting specific myosins without affecting others has been challenging since most myosins share a common...

Brent Scott joins the lab

The Greenberg lab welcomes Brent Scott, PhD as a new postdoc in the lab.