Tyler Kirby starts research group on skeletal muscle at Amsterdam UMC

Tyler Kirby recently started his independent group in the Department of Physiology at Amsterdam UMC. He received his PhD in Physiology from the University of Kentucky in fall 2015 under the guidance of Drs. John McCarthy and Charlotte Peterson. During his PhD, he studied how muscle stem cells regulate both muscle fiber and extracellular matrix adaptation during periods of mechanical load, and how these processes are altered during the normal aging process. His interests in mechanotransduction and tissue engineering brought Tyler to Cornell University, where he pursued his postdoctoral work in Dr. Jan Lammerding’s laboratory within the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology. At Cornell, Tyler studied a rare group of muscular dystrophies, termed laminopathies, and found that the disease-causing mutations render skeletal muscle nuclei extremely susceptible to mechanical stress. His group at Amsterdam UMC will focus on understanding the fundamental mechanisms regulating mechanotransduction in skeletal muscle, specifically how mechanical forces are “sensed” by myonuclei, and how defects in this critical physiological process may contribute to age- and disease-related muscle dysfunction.