1. Home
  2. People

Chad Grueter, PhD

Associate Professor of Internal Medicine-Cardiovascular Medicine

Current Positions

  • Associate Professor of Internal Medicine-Cardiovascular Medicine
  • Vice Chair for Research, Department of Internal Medicine

Education

  • PhD, Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas

Graduate Program Affiliations

Center, Program and Institute Affiliations

Research Interests

  • The basis for the research in my laboratory lies in my strong interest in understanding the transcriptional and posttranscriptional processes that are disrupted in heart disease. In our previous studies, we identified a novel transcriptional signaling pathway in the heart that mediates the heart's ability to regulate whole body metabolism. Through a combination of pharmacological and genetic gain- and loss-of-function studies in mice, we found the heart is capable of regulating whole body metabolism through a mechanism that is governed by MED13 and miR-208a. MED13 is a particularly interesting component of the Mediator complex because it functions as a molecular bridge between the core complex and kinase submodule, providing a mechanism for spatial and temporal control of Mediator-dependent regulation of transcription. Recently, we have identified a key role for other components of the Mediator complex including CDK8 and MED1 in regulation cardiac function and the cardiac transcriptional profile. We primarily utilize mutant mouse models to study the proteomic, molecular, bioinformatic and biochemical methods to study the molecular signaling events controlling cardiac transcriptional response to stress.

Selected Publications

  • Chen, X., Zhabyeyev, P., Azad, A. K., Wang, W., Minerath, R. A., DesAulniers, J., Grueter, C. E., Murray, A. G., Kassiri, Z., Vanhaesebroeck, B. & Oudit, G. Y. (2019). Endothelial and cardiomyocyte PI3Kβ divergently regulate cardiac remodelling in response to ischaemic injury. Cardiovascular research 115 (8) 1343-1356. DOI: 10.1093/cvr/cvy298. PMID: 30496354. PMCID: PMC6587920.
  • Minerath, R. A., Hall, D. D. & Grueter, C. E. (2019). Targeting transcriptional machinery to inhibit enhancer-driven gene expression in heart failure. Heart failure reviews. DOI: 10.1007/s10741-019-09792-3. PMID: 30972522.
  • Minerath, R. A., Dewey, C. M., Hall, D. D. & Grueter, C. E. (2019). Regulation of cardiac transcription by thyroid hormone and Med13. Journal of molecular and cellular cardiology 129 27-38. DOI: 10.1016/j.yjmcc.2019.01.007. PMID: 30769017. PMCID: PMC6510257.
  • Hall, D. D., Spitler, K. M. & Grueter, C. E. (2019). Disruption of cardiac Med1 inhibits RNA polymerase II promoter occupancy and promotes chromatin remodeling. American journal of physiology. Heart and circulatory physiology 316 (2) H314-H325. DOI: 10.1152/ajpheart.00580.2018. PMID: 30461303. PMCID: PMC6397381.
  • Guo, A., Wang, Y., Chen, B., Wang, Y., Yuan, J., Zhang, L., Hall, D., Wu, J., Shi, Y., Zhu, Q., Chen, C., Thiel, W. H., Zhan, X., Weiss, R. M., Musselman, C. A., Pufall, M., Zhu, W., Au, K. F., Hong, J., Anderson, M. E., Grueter, C. E., Song, L. S. & Zhan, F. (2018). E-C coupling structural protein junctophilin-2 encodes a stress-adaptive transcription regulator. Science (New York, N.Y.) 362 (6421). PMID: 30409805. DOI: 10.1126/science.aan3303.
  • Hall, D. D., Ponce, J. M., Chen, B., Spitler, K. M., Alexia, A., Oudit, G. Y., Song, L. S. & Grueter, C. E. (2017). Ectopic expression of Cdk8 induces eccentric hypertrophy and heart failure. JCI insight 2 (15). DOI: 10.1172/jci.insight.92476. PMID: 28768905. PMCID: PMC5543923.
  • Spitler, K. M., Ponce, J. M., Oudit, G. Y., Hall, D. D. & Grueter, C. E. (2017). Cardiac Med1 deletion promotes early lethality, cardiac remodeling, and transcriptional reprogramming. American journal of physiology. Heart and circulatory physiology 312 (4) H768-H780. DOI: 10.1152/ajpheart.00728.2016. PMID: 28159809. PMCID: PMC5407164.
  • Dewey, C. M., Spitler, K. M., Ponce, J. M., Hall, D. D. & Grueter, C. E. (2016). Cardiac-Secreted Factors as Peripheral Metabolic Regulators and Potential Disease Biomarkers. Journal of the American Heart Association 5 (6). DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.115.003101. PMID: 27247337. PMCID: PMC4937259.
  • Song, L. S., Guo, A., Hall, D., Zhang, C., Peng, T., Miller, J. D., Kutschke, W., Grueter, C. E., Johnson, F. L. & Lin, R. Z. (2015). Molecular Determinants of Calpain-dependent Cleavage of Junctophilin-2 Protein in Cardiomyocytes. The Journal of biological chemistry 290 (29) 17946-55. PMID: 26063807. DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M115.652396.
  • Baskin, K. K., Grueter, C. E., Kusminski, C. M., Holland, W. L., Bookout, A. L., Satapati, S., Kong, Y. M., Burgess, S. C., Malloy, C. R., Scherer, P. E., Newgard, C. B., Bassel-Duby, R. & Olson, E. N. (2014). MED13-dependent signaling from the heart confers leanness by enhancing metabolism in adipose tissue and liver. EMBO molecular medicine 6 (12) 1610-21. DOI: 10.15252/emmm.201404218. PMID: 25422356. PMCID: PMC4287978.