Systems Mechanobiology Approaches for Study of Cardiovascular and Neural Disease

Date

Nov 16, 2023

Time

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Speaker

Adele Doyle

Affiliation

Physics of Life Cluster of Excellence (PoL), TU DresdenCenter for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD) guest group

Series

MPI-CBG Thursday Seminar

Language

en

Main Topic

Biologie

Host

Christoph Zechner

Description

A cell’s ability to sense and respond to physical cues is a specialized trait necessary to maintain tissue and organ homeostasis. In contrast, disruptions in local mechanical forces are linked with major chronic human health burdens, such as altered shear stress triggering cardiovascular disease and high velocity and magnitude compression resulting in traumatic brain injury. Decades of research have given insight into the specific consequences of physical cues on specialized cell functions. However, there remains an unmet need to understand how biophysical cues couple to molecular effects at a system-scale. This talk will present a novel computational tool to screen for molecules involved in cell signaling in response to specific biophysical cues. This approach enabled molecule identification, putative mechanosignaling network formation and cross-referencing to known cardiovascular disease indicators. We contrast this computational approach with an experimental one, in which we employed a microfluidic-based MEMS device to apply rapid, abrupt compression to individual neural stem cells and assess the cellular response to traumatic injury. Transcriptome measurements of cells compressed at varied magnitude and duration revealed a novel molecular signature of traumatic injury and a role for compression-induced signaling to alter neuroinflammation. Taken together, these data highlight the potential of systems biology approaches to contribute to study of mechanosignaling and elucidate the role of biophysics in regulating normal cell development and function.

Last modified: Nov 17, 2023, 7:37:56 AM