Alessandro Magli, PhD

My research aims at understanding the molecular mechanisms at the basis of cell differentiation and stem cell maintenance, which play important roles during development and in tissue homeostasis. During both my graduate and post-graduate career, I tackled these questions by mainly focusing on the transcriptional regulation of skeletal myogenic program. Using mouse embryonic stem cells as a model for investigating embryonic development, my works demonstrated that Pax3 specifies the skeletal myogenic lineage by regulating 1) chromatin remodeling at the myogenic enhancers, and 2) establishment of long-range interactions required for enhancer-enhancer and enhancer-promoter looping, a process mediated by recruitment of Ldb1.

Similarly, elucidation of these developmental mechanisms represented a fundamental step toward the therapeutic application of human pluripotent stem cells, as demonstrated by the identification of surface markers enabling the prospective isolation of human pluripotent-derived myogenic progenitors. Understanding the molecular regulation of these progenitors will be instrumental for the generation of improved cell-based therapies for muscle diseases and for the development of novel animal model to study muscle function.

• 2019 Selected for oral presentation at the Gordon Research Conferences – Myogenesis
• 2017 Selected for presentation at the online event “24 Hours of Stem Cells”
• 2015 Awardee. Minnesota Regenerative Medicine Educational Grant
• 2010 Travel Award. FASEB Summer Research Conferences
• 2010 Finalist Visscher Symposium – University of Minnesota

Greg Marzolf Junior Foundation “Decoding quiescence of human satellite cells to improve skeletal muscle regeneration”

A complete list of publications can be found at:

• Magli A, Baik J, Pota P, Ortiz Cordero C, Kwak IY, Garry DJ, Love PE, Dynlacht BD and Perlingeiro RCR. Pax3 cooperates with Ldb1 to direct local chromosome architecture during myogenic lineage specification. Nat Commun. 2019 May 24;10(1):2316. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-10318-6. PubMed PMID: 31127120.
• Magli A, Baik J, Mills LJ, Kwak IY, Dillon BS, Mondragon Gonzalez R, Stafford DA, Swanson SA, Stewart R, Thomson JA, Garry DJ, Dynlacht BD, Perlingeiro RCR. Time-dependent Pax3-mediated chromatin remodeling and cooperation with Six4 and Tead2 specify the skeletal myogenic lineage in developing mesoderm. PLoS Biology. 2019 Feb 26;17(2):e3000153. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000153. eCollection 2019 Feb. PubMed PMID: 30807574.
• Magli A, Perlingeiro RCR. Myogenic progenitor specification from pluripotent stem cells. Semin Cell Dev Biol. 2017 Dec;72:87-98. doi: 10.1016/j.semcdb.2017.10.031. Review. PubMed PMID: 29107681; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5723218.
• Magli A, Incitti T, Kiley J, Swanson SA, Darabi R, Rinaldi F, Selvaraj S, Yamamoto A, Tolar J, Yuan C, Stewart R, Thomson JA and Perlingeiro RCR. PAX7 Targets, CD54, Integrin ?9?1 and SDC2, Allow Isolation of Human ES/iPS Cell-Derived Myogenic Progenitors. Cell Reports. 2017 Jun 27;19(13):2867-2877. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2017.06.005.
• Lilja KC, Zhang N#, Magli A#, Gunduz V#, Bowman CJ, Arpke RW, Darabi R, Kyba M, Perlingeiro R, Dynlacht BD. Pax7 remodels the chromatin landscape in skeletal muscle stem cells. PLoS One. 2017 Apr 25;12(4):e0176190. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176190.