The Zammit Group

Skeletal muscle is an archetypal adult stem cell model, in which maintenance, growth and repair of functionally specialised post-mitotic cells is achieved by recruitment of undifferentiated precursors. Our core research is directed at understanding how muscle stem cells are regulated in healthy, aged and diseased skeletal muscle. The functional unit of skeletal muscle is the myofibre: a giant syncytial cell maintained by hundreds of post-mitotic myonuclei. The routine needs for myonuclear homeostasis, together with the more sporadic demands for hypertrophy and repair, are performed by muscle satellite cells. These resident stem cells are normally mitotically quiescent in mature muscle, and so must first be activated to undergo extensive proliferation to generate myoblasts that eventually differentiate to provide new myonuclei. Diseases such as the muscular dystrophies are characterised by muscle wasting, meaning that this repair/regeneration function performed by satellite cells becomes progressively compromised.

The main themes of the Zammit group include investigating the transcriptional and signalling control of satellite cell activation and cell fate choice and examining pathomechanisms and potential therapies for muscular dystrophies including Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy and Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy and muscle-related cancers such as rhabdomyosarcoma.

Current PhD students:
Elise Engquist
Noreen Khokhar
Daniel Moore
Laurence Quenault

Collaborators:F. Relaix (Faculté de Médecine Pitié-Salpétrière, Paris, France)F. S. Tedesco (University College London, London, UK)Y. Ono (Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan)C. Christ (McGill University, Montreal, Canada)
A. Kozlov and J. Grillari (Ludqig Boltzmann Institute for Experimental and Clinical Traumatology, Vienna, Austria)
B. G. M. van Engelen, A. Greco, and L. Joosten (Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands)
H. Wackerhage (TMU, Munich, Germany)
R. Knight (King’s College London, London, UK)

Members

Massimo Ganassi

Research Associate

Peter Zammit

Professor of Cell Biology

Antagonism between DUX4 and DUX4c highlights a pathomechanism operating through ß-catenin in Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy
Ganassi, M., Figeac, N., Reynaud, M., Quiroga, H. P. & Zammit, P., 17 Jun 2022, (Accepted/In press) In: Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology. Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review. DOIs: https://doi.org/10.3389/fcell.2022.802573
Interplay between mitochondrial reactive oxygen species, oxidative stress and hypoxic adaptation in facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy: Metabolic stress as potential therapeutic target
Heher, P., Ganassi, M., Weidinger, A., Engquist, E., Prueller, J., Nguyen, T. H., Tassin, A., Declèves, A-E., Mamchaoui, K., Grillari, J., Kozlov, A. & Zammit, P., May 2022, In: Redox Biology. 51, 49 p., 102251. Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review. DOIs: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.redox.2022.102251
DVL1 and DVL3 require nuclear localisation to regulate proliferation in human myoblasts
Prueller, J., Figeac, N. & Zammit, P., 25 Mar 2022, (Accepted/In press) In: Nature Scientific Reports. Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Involvement of Muscle Satellite Cell Dysfunction in Neuromuscular Disorders: Expanding the Portfolio of Satellite Cell-opathies
Ganassi, M. & Zammit, P., 11 Feb 2022, (Accepted/In press) In: European Journal of Translational Myology. Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Fine-Tuning of Piezo1 Expression and Activity Ensures Efficient Myoblast Fusion during Skeletal Myogenesis
Ortuste Quiroga, H. P., Ganassi, M., Yokoyama, S., Nakamura, K., Yamashita, T., Raimbach, D., Hagiwara, A., Harrington, O., Breach-Teji, J., Asakura, A., Suzuki, Y., Tominaga, M., Zammit, P. S. & Goto, K., 1 Feb 2022, In: Cells. 11, 3, 393. Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review. DOIs: https://doi.org/10.3390/cells11030393
Defining and identifying satellite cell-opathies within muscular dystrophies and myopathies
Ganassi, M., Muntoni, F. & Zammit, P., 3 Nov 2021, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Experimental Cell Research. Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Isolation of Myofibres and Culture of Muscle Stem Cells from Adult Zebrafish
Ganassi, M., Zammit, P. S. & Hughes, S. M., 5 Sep 2021, In: Bio-protocol. 11, 17, p. e4149 Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review. DOIs: https://doi.org/10.21769/BioProtoc.4149
Pathomechanisms and biomarkers in facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy: roles of DUX4 and PAX7
Banerji, C. R. S. & Zammit, P. S., 9 Aug 2021, In: EMBO Molecular Medicine. 13, 8, e13695. Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review. DOIs: https://doi.org/10.15252/emmm.202013695
mRNP granule proteins Fmrp and Dcp1a differentially regulate mRNP complexes to contribute to control of muscle stem cell quiescence and activation
Roy, N., Sundar, S., Pillai, M., Patell-Socha, F., Ganesh, S., Aloysius, A., Rumman, M., Gala, H., Hughes, S. M., Zammit, P. S. & Dhawan, J., 8 Jul 2021, In: Skeletal Muscle. 11, 1, p. 18 18. Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review. DOIs: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13395-021-00270-9
The Satellite Cell at 60: The Foundation Years
Engquist, E. N. & Zammit, P. S., 2021, In: Journal of Neuromuscular Diseases. 8, s2, p. S183-S203 Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review. DOIs: https://doi.org/10.3233/JND-210705

View all publications

Selected Recent Talks

Gordon Research Conference - Building, Maintaining and Regenerating Skeletal Muscle, Italy, June 2019 Co-Chair-FSH Society’s 26th Annual FSHD International Research Congress, France, June 2019 OLIGO 2019 OXFORD: Antisense & Therapeutic Nucleic Acids, Oxford, UK, April 2019 AFM-Téléthon Myology 2019, Bordeaux, France, March 2019 240th European NeuroMuscular Centre workshop: The involvement of skeletal muscle stem cells in the pathology of muscular dystrophies, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, January 2019 FASEB Skeletal Muscle Satellite Cells and Regeneration, Steamboat Springs, USA, July 2018 Lay talk at 2018 FSHD Connect: The FSH Society’s International Network Meeting for FSHD Families, Clinicians, and Researchers, Las Vegas, USA, June 2018 Co-Chair-FSH Society Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy 2018 International Research Congress & Research Planning Meetings, Las Vegas, June 2018 OLIGO 2018 OXFORD, St. Hilda’s College Oxford, UK, April 2018 Muscle Development, Regeneration and Disease 2018, Berlin, Germany April 2018 Gordon Research Conference - Advanced Mechanisms of Growth and Repair in Myogenesis, Italy, June 2017

Former group members

Viola Gnocchi PhD
Yusuke Ono PhD
Frederico Calhabeu PhD
Robert White PhD
Mathieu Fortier PhD
Jaclyn lee
Janet Davies PhD
Congshan Sun PhD
Nicolas Figeac PhD

Former PhD students

Heather Steele-Stallard (co-supervisor)
Huascar Ortuste Quiroga
Steffanie Knapp (2^nd supervisor)
Christopher R.S. Banerji (a joint supervisor)
Louise Moyle
Juergen Scharner
Paul Knopp

Our partners

We are extremely grateful to our funders

Medical Research Council

Muscular Dystrophy UK

The FSHD Society

The French Muscular Dystrophy Association

Wellcome Trust

Group lead

Professor Peter Zammit

Professor of Cell Biology

The Zammit Group

Members

Massimo Ganassi

Peter Zammit

Antagonism between DUX4 and DUX4c highlights a pathomechanism operating through ß-catenin in Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy

Interplay between mitochondrial reactive oxygen species, oxidative stress and hypoxic adaptation in facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy: Metabolic stress as potential therapeutic target

DVL1 and DVL3 require nuclear localisation to regulate proliferation in human myoblasts

Involvement of Muscle Satellite Cell Dysfunction in Neuromuscular Disorders: Expanding the Portfolio of Satellite Cell-opathies

Fine-Tuning of Piezo1 Expression and Activity Ensures Efficient Myoblast Fusion during Skeletal Myogenesis

Defining and identifying satellite cell-opathies within muscular dystrophies and myopathies

Isolation of Myofibres and Culture of Muscle Stem Cells from Adult Zebrafish

Pathomechanisms and biomarkers in facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy: roles of DUX4 and PAX7

mRNP granule proteins Fmrp and Dcp1a differentially regulate mRNP complexes to contribute to control of muscle stem cell quiescence and activation

The Satellite Cell at 60: The Foundation Years

Selected Recent Talks

Our partners

Group lead

Professor Peter Zammit

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