Anastasia Gromova, PhD
My primary research interest is unraveling the crosstalk between skeletal muscle and motor neurons and understanding how that communication is altered in aging and/or disease. My graduate work pertains to a rare, X-linked neuromuscular disease called Spinal and Bulbar Muscular Atrophy (SBMA), caused by a polyglutamine expansion mutation in the Androgen Receptor gene. I aim to understand the mechanism behind an earlier finding in our lab where excision of this causative mutation from skeletal muscle only was sufficient to not only rescue myopathy in SBMA mice, but also motor neuron degeneration.