Olga Karpicheva, Ph.D.
Research Scientist
In development, every movement gains meaning
My research investigates how structural changes in thin filament proteins regulate muscle contraction and how disease-causing mutations disrupt this process in cardiac and skeletal myopathies.
My expertise integrates molecular biology, biochemical and functional assays, biophysical methods such as cryo-electron microscopy, as well as polarized fluorescence microscopy in single muscle fibers used in my earlier work, and computational approaches including molecular dynamics simulations, flexible fitting, and structural modeling. My work aims to uncover unresolved aspects of the molecular mechanisms that regulate muscle contraction, with the ultimate goal of establishing principles for restoring sarcomere contractile function disrupted in muscle diseases.