Final Report Summary - RESEAL (Epithelial Resealing)
The objective of the ReSeal project was to further understand how epithelial wounds are repaired in simple epithelia. Epithelia have the fundamental role of acting as a barrier that protects living organisms and its organs from the surrounding environment. Due to its protective role, epithelial tissues need to have robust ways of maintaining their integrity, which can be threatened by the frequent damage caused not only by pathogenic infection or injury but also by normal cell turnover. All biologically active epithelia have some repair capacity, however, the wound healing process differs dramatically according to the type of tissue involved.
In this project we used Drosophila to study the capacity that several simple epithelial tissues have to reseal small discontinuities very rapidly and efficiently. We have investigated epithelial repair using a combination of genetics and high resolution live imaging. We have identified novel genes involved in healing Drosophila epithelial wounds, the analysis of some of those genes has contributed to improve our understating of this repair process and we have translated some of our results to a vertebrate model.
Our work led to the identification of many signalling pathways that regulate the wound healing response, some of which we have investigated in more detail: we have shown that the increase of intracellular calcium levels is part of an immediate wound response that initiates the tissue movements that drive wound closure; our results show that that Septate/Tight Junctions play important roles in epithelial repair; and we have identified the Toll signaling as a new important pathway in the wound repair. The project has also contributed significantly to consolidate your research group, generating ideas and tools that were important to develop other projects in the lab and to stimulate collaborations. These developments include collaborative projects to explore potential therapeutic application of our findings. The ReSeal team members have benefit enormously from the project as many it contributed to their scientific development and enabled career opportunities. There was also a very positive impact in the host institutions as the grant helped to spread a culture of scientific excellence and inspired other ERC applications.
In this project we used Drosophila to study the capacity that several simple epithelial tissues have to reseal small discontinuities very rapidly and efficiently. We have investigated epithelial repair using a combination of genetics and high resolution live imaging. We have identified novel genes involved in healing Drosophila epithelial wounds, the analysis of some of those genes has contributed to improve our understating of this repair process and we have translated some of our results to a vertebrate model.
Our work led to the identification of many signalling pathways that regulate the wound healing response, some of which we have investigated in more detail: we have shown that the increase of intracellular calcium levels is part of an immediate wound response that initiates the tissue movements that drive wound closure; our results show that that Septate/Tight Junctions play important roles in epithelial repair; and we have identified the Toll signaling as a new important pathway in the wound repair. The project has also contributed significantly to consolidate your research group, generating ideas and tools that were important to develop other projects in the lab and to stimulate collaborations. These developments include collaborative projects to explore potential therapeutic application of our findings. The ReSeal team members have benefit enormously from the project as many it contributed to their scientific development and enabled career opportunities. There was also a very positive impact in the host institutions as the grant helped to spread a culture of scientific excellence and inspired other ERC applications.