Sarah Franklin

Sarah Franklin, PhD

Languages spoken: English

Academic Information

Departments Primary - Internal Medicine

Divisions: Cardiovascular Medicine

Sarah Franklin, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Utah with a research laboratory in the Nora Eccles Harrison Cardiovascular Research and Training Institute (CVRTI). She received her PhD from Brigham Young University and then received postdoctoral training at UCLA in the department of Anesthesiology.

Dr Franklin is also an Assistant Director with the Rural & Underserved Utah Training Experience (RUUTE) in the School of Medicine. She oversees the RUUTE summer research experiences for undergraduate and medical students and teaches the Research & Innovation Course over the summer. Dr. Franklin is passionate about exposing young individuals to new career paths in medicine and science, creating meaningful educational opportunities for students, and mentoring them along their academic journey. She grew up on a cattle ranch in rural Utah and loves to extend educational opportunities to all corners of the state.



Dr Franklin's research interests focus on understanding how the packaging of DNA around nucleosomes influences specific patterns of gene expression and how this packaging is modulated during disease to alter transcriptional activity. Specifically her research is aimed at understanding the mechanistic basis for how remodeling of chromatin induces the re-expression of fetal genes in the heart during the development of hypertrophy and failure. She has utilized a mouse model of pressure overload hypertrophy, a novel method for isolation and fractionation of cardiac nuclei and state-of-the-art mass spectrometry to characterize the protein constituents of chromatin from normal and diseased hearts. This work has allowed her to identify a number of novel chromatin binding proteins whose abundance is differentially regulated during heart failure progression. Her laboratory has now begun to evaluate the specific role of these proteins on chromatin structure and heart morphology and physiology using isolated cell and animal models.

Education History

Undergraduate College of Eastern Utah
 AS
Undergraduate Brigham Young University
 BS
Doctoral Training Brigham Young University
 PhD
Fellowship University of California, Department of Anesthesiology
 Postdoctoral Fellow

Selected Publications

Journal Article

  1. Velinder M, Singer J, Bareyan D, Meznarich J, Tracy CM, Fulcher JM, McClellan D, Lucente H, Franklin S, Sharma S, Engel M (2016). GFI1 functions in transcriptional control and cell fate determination require SNAG domain methylation to recruit LSD1. The Biochemical journal, 473(19), 3355-69. (Read full article)
  2. Velinder M, Singer J, Bareyan D, Meznarich J, Tracy CM, Fulcher JM, McClellan D, Lucente H, Franklin S, Sharma S, Engel M (2017). GFI1 functions in transcriptional control and cell fate determination require SNAG domain methylation to recruit LSD1. The Biochemical journal, 474(17), 2951. (Read full article)
  3. Ludlam WG, Aoba T, Cuéllar J, Bueno-Carrasco MT, Makaju A, Moody JD, Franklin S, Valpuesta JM, Willardson B (2019). Molecular architecture of the Bardet-Biedl syndrome protein 2-7-9 subcomplex. The Journal of biological chemistry, 294(44), 16385-16399. (Read full article)
  4. Monte E, Rosa-Garrido M, Karbassi E, Chen H, Lopez R, Rau CD, Wang J, Nelson SF, Wu Y, Stefani E, Lusis AJ, Wang Y, Kurdistani SK, Franklin S, Vondriska T (2016). Reciprocal Regulation of the Cardiac Epigenome by Chromatin Structural Proteins Hmgb and Ctcf: IMPLICATIONS FOR TRANSCRIPTIONAL REGULATION. The Journal of biological chemistry, 291(30), 15428-46. (Read full article)
  5. Warren JS, Tracy CM, Miller MR, Makaju A, Szulik MW, Oka SI, Yuzyuk TN, Cox JE, Kumar A, Lozier BK, Wang L, Llana JG, Sabry AD, Cawley KM, Barton DW, Han YH, Boudina S, Fiehn O, Tucker HO, Zaitsev AV, Franklin (2018). Histone methyltransferase Smyd1 regulates mitochondrial energetics in the heart. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(33), E7871-E7880. (Read full article)
  6. Plimpton RL, Cuéllar J, Lai CW, Aoba T, Makaju A, Franklin S, Mathis AD, Prince JT, Carrascosa JL, Valpuesta JM, Willardson B (2015). Structures of the Gß-CCT and PhLP1-Gß-CCT complexes reveal a mechanism for G-protein ß-subunit folding and Gß¿ dimer assembly. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(8), 2413-8. (Read full article)
  7. Franklin S, Kimball T, Rasmussen TL, Rosa-Garrido M, Chen H, Tran T, Miller MR, Gray R, Jiang S, Ren S, Wang Y, Tucker HO, Vondriska T (2016). The chromatin-binding protein Smyd1 restricts adult mammalian heart growth. American journal of physiology. Heart and circulatory physiology, 311(5), H1234-H1247. (Read full article)
  8. Monte E, Mouillesseaux K, Chen H, Kimball T, Ren S, Wang Y, Chen JN, Vondriska TM, Franklin (2013). Systems proteomics of cardiac chromatin identifies nucleolin as a regulator of growth and cellular plasticity in cardiomyocytes. American journal of physiology. Heart and circulatory physiology, 305(11), H1624-38. (Read full article)
  9. Szulik MW, Davis K, Bakhtina A, Azarcon P, Bia R, Horiuchi E, Franklin (2020). Transcriptional regulation by methyltransferases and their role in the heart: highlighting novel emerging functionality. American journal of physiology. Heart and circulatory physiology, 319(4), H847-H865. (Read full article)
  10. Shanmugam G, Wang D, Gounder SS, Fernandes J, Litovsky SH, Whitehead K, Radhakrishnan RK, Franklin S, Hoidal JR, Kensler TW, Dell'Italia L, Darley-Usmar V, Abel ED, Jones DP, Ping P, Rajasekaran N (2020). Reductive Stress Causes Pathological Cardiac Remodeling and Diastolic Dysfunction. Antioxidants & redox signaling, 32(18), 1293-1312. (Read full article)
  11. Franklin S, Zhang M, Chen H, Paulsson AK, Mitchell-Jordan SA, Li Y, Ping P, Vondriska T (2010). Specialized compartments of cardiac nuclei exhibit distinct proteome anatomy. Molecular & cellular proteomics, 10(1),
  12. Kumar P P, Franklin S, Emechebe U, Hu H, Moore B, Lehman C, Yandell M, Moon A (2014). TBX3 regulates splicing in vivo: a novel molecular mechanism for Ulnar-mammary syndrome. PLoS genetics, 10(3), e1004247. (Read full article)
  13. Shibayama J, Yuzyuk TN, Cox J, Makaju A, Miller M, Lichter J, Li H, Leavy JD, Franklin S, Zaitsev A (2015). Metabolic remodeling in moderate synchronous versus dyssynchronous pacing-induced heart failure: integrated metabolomics and proteomics study. PloS one, 10(3), e0118974. (Read full article)
  14. Cuéllar J, Ludlam WG, Tensmeyer NC, Aoba T, Dhavale M, Santiago C, Bueno-Carrasco MT, Mann MJ, Plimpton RL, Makaju A, Franklin S, Willardson BM, Valpuesta J (2019). Structural and functional analysis of the role of the chaperonin CCT in mTOR complex assembly. Nature communications, 10(1), 2865. (Read full article)
  15. Buffolo M, Pires KM, Ferhat M, Ilkun O, Makaju A, Achenbach A, Bowman F, Atkinson DL, Holland WL, Amri EZ, Chaurasia B, Franklin S, Boudina (2019). Identification of a Paracrine Signaling Mechanism Linking CD34high Progenitors to the Regulation of Visceral Fat Expansion and Remodeling. Cell reports, 29(2), 270-282.e5. (Read full article)
  16. Kumar P P, Emechebe U, Smith R, Franklin S, Moore B, Yandell M, Lessnick SL, Moon A (2014). Coordinated control of senescence by lncRNA and a novel T-box3 co-repressor complex. eLife, 3, (Read full article)
  17. Shimizu H, Schredelseker J, Huang J, Lu K, Naghdi S, Lu F, Franklin S, Fiji HD, Wang K, Zhu H, Tian C, Lin B, Nakano H, Ehrlich A, Nakai J, Stieg AZ, Gimzewski JK, Nakano A, Goldhaber JI, Vondriska TM, Hajnóczky G, Kwon O, Chen J (2015). Mitochondrial Ca(2+) uptake by the voltage-dependent anion channel 2 regulates cardiac rhythmicity. eLife, 4, (Read full article)
  18. Lu G, Ota A, Ren S, Franklin S, Rau CD, Ping P, Lane TF, Zhou ZH, Reue K, Lusis AJ, Vondriska T, Wang (2013). PPM1l encodes an inositol requiring-protein 1 (IRE1) specific phosphatase that regulates the functional outcome of the ER stress response. Molecular metabolism, 2(4), 405-16. (Read full article)
  19. Tracy C, Warren JS, Szulik M, Wang L, Garcia J, Makaju A, Russell K, Miller M, Franklin (2018). The Smyd Family of Methyltransferases: Role in Cardiac and Skeletal Muscle Physiology and Pathology. Current opinion in physiology, 1, 140-152. (Read full article)

Review

  1. Tracy C, Warren J, Szulik M, Wang L, Garcia J, Makaju A, Russel K, Miller M, Franklin (2017). The Smyd family of methyltransferases: Role in cardiac and skeletal muscle physiology and pathology. Current opinion in physiology, 1, 140-152.