Raul Padron and Roger Craig Published in Nature

Raúl Padrón, PhD, professor of radiology; Debabrata Dutta, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in radiology; Roger Craig, PhD, professor of radiology; and Vu Nguyen, research associate in radiology at UMass Chan. published an article in Nature in November 2023, Cryo-EM structure of the human cardiac myosin filament. A recent article in UMass Chan News featured the team and with an overview of the article.

An exerpt from the UMass Chan News article by Jim Fessenden: Debabrata Dutta, PhD, a postdoc in the lab of Roger Craig, PhD, and Raúl Padrón, PhD, professors of radiology, used cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to reveal in precise detail the molecular structure of the main contractile component of human cardiac muscle known as the thick filament. Published in Nature, the research shows how the motor protein responsible for contraction—myosin—is organized molecularly in the filament. This unprecedented level of detail allows scientists to understand how mutations in this structure lead to heart failure and can potentially be used to design therapies to treat defects in this complex machine.