Sylvia Evans

About

Sylvia Evans, Ph.D., is a professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and also affiliated with the Department of Medicine at the School of Medicine. Her research focuses on defining genetic pathways underlying heart development and applying that understanding to both congenital and adult heart disease. A fundamental aspect of her work involves understanding the stepwise process by which mesodermal precursors become committed to cardiac progenitors and are specified into distinct cardiac lineages. Dr. Evans' lab has developed several Cre-expressing mouse models to examine gene pathways required for specific cardiac lineages, including the proepicardial organ, vasculature cells, and cardiac fibroblasts. Her academic background includes a B.S. in Genetics from the University of Alberta, a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of British Columbia, and a postdoctoral fellowship in Neuromolecular Biology at The Salk Institute. She has received numerous awards and honors, such as the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award and the Cardiovascular NHLBI Outstanding Investigator Award, and has held leadership roles including Chair of the AHA Western Affiliate Peer Review Committee and Director of the UCSD Stem Cell Program.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Biology
• Genetics
• Immunology
• Medicine
• Endocrinology
• Cardiology
• Cell biology

Selected publications

• Spatially organized cellular communities form the developing human heart

  Nature · 2024-03-13 · 173 citations

  articleOpen access

  . However, how diverse cardiac cell types spatially coordinate to create the complex morphological structures that are crucial for heart function remains unclear. Here we integrated single-cell RNA-sequencing with high-resolution multiplexed error-robust fluorescence in situ hybridization to resolve the identity of the cardiac cell types that develop the human heart. This approach also provided a spatial mapping of individual cells that enables illumination of their organization into cellular co…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Unveiling Complexity and Multipotentiality of Early Heart Fields

  Circulation Research · 2021 · 97 citations

  [Figure: see text].

  DOI

• Parallel Lineage-Tracing Studies Establish Fibroblasts as the Prevailing In Vivo Adipocyte Progenitor

  Cell Reports · 2020 · 89 citations

  Despite decades of studies suggesting that the in vivo adipocyte progenitor resides within the vascular niche, the exact nature of this progenitor remains controversial because distinct studies have attributed adipogenic properties to multiple vascular cell types. Using Cre recombinases labeling distinct vascular lineages, we conduct parallel lineage tracing experiments to assess their degree of contribution to de novo adipogenesis. Although we detect occasional adipocytes that were lineage trac…

  DOI

• RNA binding protein DDX5 restricts RORγt ⁺ T _reg suppressor function to promote intestine inflammation

  Science Advances · 2023-02-01 · 18 citations

  articleOpen access

  Retinoid-related orphan receptor (RAR) gamma (RORγt)–expressing regulatory T cells (RORγt + T regs ) play pivotal roles in preventing T cell hyperactivation and maintaining tissue homeostasis, in part by secreting the anti-inflammation cytokine interleukin-10 (IL-10). Here, we report that hypoxia-induced factor 1α (HIF1α) is the master transcription factor for Il10 in RORγt + T regs . This critical anti-inflammatory pathway is negatively regulated by an RNA binding protein DEAD box helicase 5 (D…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Filamin C is Essential for mammalian myocardial integrity

  PLoS Genetics · 2023-01-27 · 16 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  FLNC, encoding filamin C, is one of the most mutated genes in dilated and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. However, the precise role of filamin C in mammalian heart remains unclear. In this study, we demonstrated Flnc global (FlncgKO) and cardiomyocyte-specific knockout (FlnccKO) mice died in utero from severely ruptured ventricular myocardium, indicating filamin C is required to maintain the structural integrity of myocardium in the mammalian heart. Contrary to the common belief that filamin C acts…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Endocardial Pathways Regulated by Tbx20

  NIH · $2.2M · 2013–2018

• NIH Grant R29HL046761

  NIH · $527k · 1997

• The Role of Dot1L in developing and postnatal heart

  NIH · $1.5M · 2014–2019

Frequent coauthors

• Ju Chen

  Xi'an University of Technology

  119 shared

• Nuno Guimarães‐Camboa

  Goethe University Frankfurt

  80 shared

• Lucie Carrier

  Universität Hamburg

  80 shared

• Paola Cattaneo

  74 shared

• Felix W. Friedrich

  68 shared

• Thomas Eschenhagen

  Universität Hamburg

  68 shared

• Thomas Moore‐Morris

  Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle

  67 shared

• Yusu Gu

  University of California, San Diego

  67 shared

Awards & honors

• Muscular Dystrophy Association Fellowship (1986-1988)
• Schulman Prize in Cardiovascular Research at UCSD (1998,1999…
• Lethbridge Collegiate Institute: Distinguished Graduate Awar…
• Invited participant in NIH Workshop to Determine Future Dire…
• Member of American Heart Association Reclassification Task F…

Similar researchers at University of California, San Diego

• Ronald M. Evansh-300
• Don W. Clevelandh-213
• Jesse Dixonh-123