Dr William Roman

GROUP LEADER

  • william.roman@monash.edu

Biography

Appointed as the EMBL Australia Thomas Baker Foundation Group Leader in 2023, Dr William Roman has established an impactful research program on intercellular communication within muscle at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI), an international centre of excellence in regenerative medicine and advanced therapies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Dr Roman obtained his PhD from the Paris Descartes University and the Freie University of Berlin working on nuclear positioning during skeletal muscle development. He then completed his post-doctoral training in the laboratory of Pura Munoz in Barcelona studying how myofibers respond to discrete injuries. In parallel, William leads the tissue engineering MyoChip team in Lisbon aimed at supplementing neurons and a vasculature to in vitro muscle culture. At Stanford University, he applied imaged-based spatial genomic techniques to muscle specimens. He is an NHMRC EL2 Investigator and a recipient of the Metcalf Award for Stem Cell Research in 2024.

Learn more about Dr Roman’s research here.

Research interests

Research interests:

  • Skeletal muscle cell biology, regeneration, and repair.
  • Tissue bioengineering of skeletal muscle organs using iPSCs and microfabrication.
  • Intra- and intercellular communication from cell behaviour to genomic response.

Featured Publications

Authors Title Published In

Roman W, Pinheiro H, Oliveira L, García-Domínguez E, Gómez-Cabrera MC, Serrano AL, Gomes ER, Muñoz-Cánoves P.

Muscle repair after physiological damage relies on nuclear migration for cellular reconstruction.

Science. 2021 Oct 15. Vol. 374, No. 6565. doi: 10.1126/science.abe5620

Roman W and Muñoz-Cánoves P.

Muscle is a stage, and cells and factors are merely players

Trends in Cell Biology. 2022 April 1. 1:S0962-8924(22)00061-7. doi: 10.1016/j.tcb.2022.03.001

Pinheiro H, Pimentel MR, Sequeira C, Oliveira LM, Pezzarossa A, Roman W, Gomes ER.

mRNA distribution in skeletal muscle is associated with mRNA size.

J Cell Sci. 2021 Jul 15;134(14):jcs256388. doi: 10.1242/jcs.256388.

Roman W, Martins JP, Gomes ER.

Local arrangement of fibronectin by myofibroblasts governs peripheral nuclear positioning in muscle cells.

Developmental cell. 2018 Jul 2;46(1):102-111.e6. doi:10.1016/j.devcel.2018.05.031

Roman W, Martins JP, Filomena AC, Voituriez R, Abella VG, Santos NC, Cadot B, Way M, Gomes ER.

Myofibril contraction and cross-linking drive nuclear movement to the periphery of skeletal muscle.

Nature Cell Biology, 2017 Oct;19(10):1189-1201. doi: 10.1038/ncb3605.