While our current research has successfully established a quantitative atlas of the structural and metabolic adaptations that define a healthy pregnancy and postpartum period , vital questions remain regarding how these regulatory mechanisms are impacted in the long term. Building upon our discovery of a crucial glucose-to-ketone metabolic switch and distinct post-partum structural remodeling , our future projects will investigate the precise homeostatic limits and cellular compartments that govern this remarkable tissue plasticity.
- Elucidating Extracellular Matrix (ECM) Plasticity: We are expanding our focus into the cardiac fibroblast compartment to determine how specific transcripts and proteins regulate ECM maintenance and degradation throughout the pregnancy-postpartum arc. This project will investigate how the matrix alters its biomechanical properties to allow the heart to expand during workload and cleanly revert to pre-pregnant dimensions after birth.
- The Impact of Sleep and Shift Work on Maternal Homeostasis: Our transcriptomic data has revealed distinct signatures of circadian dysregulation during normal pregnancy. A major future initiative will utilize a Guytonian feedback approach to examine how poor sleep, sleep deprivation, and shift work act as extrinsic stressors that disrupt normal maternal cardiovascular and systemic adaptations.
- Predictive Computational Modeling of Pregnancy Adaptations: In an ambitious, long-term multi-disciplinary effort, we aim to integrate our extensive quantitative physiological and multi-omic data to build predictive computational models. This project seeks to map physiological feedback control loops mathematically to identify effective biomarker panels and predict at-risk patient populations before clinical complications arise.