Project description
Study examines how endogenous electric fields affect cell growth
Endogenous electric fields in tissues are essential for growth and repair, a trait shared by many species. During regeneration, wound electric currents can last hours to days, even after healing, affecting organ growth by increasing cell division rates. However, how ion flows, membrane potential and cell growth interact during regeneration remain unclear. Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the ElectricFins project will seek to uncover these electrical changes when organs are damaged and how they trigger cell growth. Using regenerating zebrafish larval fins, researchers will employ fast imaging and electrophysiology to measure electrical signals immediately after injury. An electrohydraulics model will connect cell ionic flows to tissue-scale electric fields. Optogenetic tools will test whether these currents start cell growth.
Objective
The existence of endogenous electric fields in tissues is a fundamental feature for successful morphogenesis and repair processes, conserved across species. In a regeneration setting, wound electric currents can last hours to days, even after the wound is closed. Altering such currents by perturbing its underlying ion flows has been shown to affect organ growth via an increase in proliferative rates. Therefore, electric field directly takes part in regeneration. However, the relationship between ion flows, membrane potential, and cell proliferation for driving the regeneration response is not well understood.
This project aims to uncover the dynamic electrical environmental changes that cells are exposed to upon organ damage, and how these can be coupled with biochemical signalling towards starting proliferation. By using the regenerating zebrafish larval fin as an experimental model, I will establish quantitative and interdisciplinary approaches that bridges injury sensing and regeneration dynamics across length and time scales. By establishing fast in vivo imaging and electrophysiology assays, I will measure the electrical signals in the fin tissue upon injury, providing an in-depth kinetic analysis of the electric spatiotemporal changes occurring within seconds of injury. In parallel, I will establish an analytic electrohydraulics model that connects cell-based ionic flows to tissue-scale electric field and currents, being continuously interwoven with experimental data and the idea of flexoelectricity. Then, I will generate and engineer optogenetic tools to spatiotemporally perturb ionic flows and electrochemical coupling strengths, directly testing the hypothesis of ion flow-derived electric currents as voltage-gated triggers for cell proliferation. This combined strategy will provide a first-of-the-kind quantitative and mechanistic study in the emerging field of bioelectricity.
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
80539 Munchen
Germany