The muscle spindle is a skeletal muscle stretch receptor that is vital to proprioception, your body’s ability to sense its position in space. There are major gaps in our understanding of the muscle spindle and its unique intrafusal fibers due to the extremely low number of muscle spindles in the human body. Funding from the ISCRM Fellowship will allow Sofia to use human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived muscle precursor cells to better understand the role of different molecular players in intrafusal fiber development, focusing on the transcription factor Egr3. By evaluating changes in gene expression during intrafusal fiber development and impacts on the ability of the fibers to respond to different stretch regimens, Sofia will work towards the development of a functional model of muscle spindles from human stem cells.
