Assistant Professor of Laboratory Medicine & Pathology and Mechanical Engineering
powersjd@uw.edu
206-221-5035
South Lake Union Medical Campus
850 Republican St.
Brotman Building, D335
Joe Powers
The Powers Lab at the University of Washington seeks to understand how heart muscle cells contract, remodel, and mechanically interact in healthy and diseased hearts. Using stem cell-derived cardiac cells and animal models, we study the relationship between cell structure, biomechanics, mechanobiology, and genetic programming, and how that relationship is affected by various forms of heart diseases. We keep an eye towards potential therapeutic advances as we gain more knowledge about the physical environment inside heart cells.
Cardiac mechanics
Cellular mechano-signaling in cardiomyopathies
Stem cell-derived models of cardiac disease
Multi-scale skeletal and cardiac muscle biomechanics
Computational modeling
Research in the Powers Lab is centered around understanding cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying various forms of heart diseases, with a focus on multi-scale biomechanics, mechanobiology, and biological structure. During each heartbeat, cardiac muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) experience a myriad of mechanical forces that originate from both within and outside of the cells. These forces are transmitted as mechanical signals between and within cardiomyocytes, where biological structures transduce them into responses that can affect numerous physiological processes from cell electrophysiology to cardiac contractility to hypertrophy. The Powers Lab integrates computational and experimental approaches using engineered rodent models and human stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes to reveal mechanosignaling pathways that are involved in cardiac dysfunction and remodeling, with the greater goal of informing the development of new therapies to treat heart diseases.
PhD, Bioengineering | University of Washington
MS, Biomedical Engineering | University of Minnesota
BS, Biomedical Engineering | University of Minnesota
BS, Physics | University of Wisconsin – La Crosse
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Bioengineering, University of California San Diego
Powers JD, Kirkland NJ, Liu C, Razu SS, Fang X, Engler AJ, et al. Subcellular Remodeling in Filamin C Deficient Mouse Hearts Impairs Myocyte Tension Development during Progression of Dilated Cardiomyopathy. Int J Mol Sci 2022 Jan 14; 23(2):. doi:10.3390/ijms23020871. Pubmed PMID: 35055055
Powers JD, Malingen SA, Regnier M, Daniel TL. The Sliding Filament Theory Since Andrew Huxley: Multiscale and Multidisciplinary Muscle Research. Annu Rev Biophys 2021 Feb 26; 50:373-400. doi:10.1146/annurev-biophys-110320-062613. Pubmed PMID: 33637009
Mijailovich SM, Prodanovic M, Poggesi C, Powers JD, Davis J, Geeves MA, et al. The effect of variable troponin C mutation thin filament incorporation on cardiac muscle twitch contractions. J Mol Cell Cardiol 2021 Feb 24; 155:112-124. doi:10.1016/j.yjmcc.2021.02.009. Pubmed PMID: 33636222
Powers JD, Kooiker KB, Mason AB, Teitgen AE, Flint GV, Tardiff JC, et al. Modulating the tension-time integral of the cardiac twitch prevents dilated cardiomyopathy in murine hearts. JCI Insight 2020 Oct 15; 5(20):. doi:10.1172/jci.insight.142446. Pubmed PMID: 32931484
Aboelkassem Y, Powers JD, McCabe KJ, McCulloch AD. Multiscale Models of Cardiac Muscle Biophysics and Tissue Remodeling in Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathies. Curr Opin Biomed Eng 2019 Sep 18; 11:35-44. doi:10.1016/j.cobme.2019.09.005. Pubmed PMID: 31886450
Powers JD, Bianco P, Pertici I, Reconditi M, Lombardi V, Piazzesi G. Contracting striated muscle has a dynamic I-band spring with an undamped stiffness 100 times larger than the passive stiffness. J Physiol 2020 Jan 3; 598(2):331-345. doi:10.1113/JP278713. Pubmed PMID: 31786814
Powers JD, Yuan CC, McCabe KJ, Murray JD, Childers MC, Flint GV, et al. Cardiac myosin activation with 2-deoxy-ATP via increased electrostatic interactions with actin. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2019 May 20; 116(23):11502-11507. doi:10.1073/pnas.1905028116. Pubmed PMID: 31110001