Vascular mechanobiology: Live imaging of blood pressure fluctuation

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K19404
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Biology of Cells to Organisms, and related fields
• Research Institution: Iwate Medical University
• Principal Investigator: Hitomi Jiro 岩手医科大学, 医学部, 教授 (00218728)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 木村 英二 岩手医科大学, 医学部, 准教授 (50405750)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-06-30 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: メカノバイオロジー / 血管形成 / ゼブラフィッシュ / FRET / ライトシート顕微鏡

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this study, we visualized blood pressure fluctuation to analyze how blood flow contributes to vascular morphogenesis zebrafish. At first, we created a new transgenic zebrafish in which a pressure sensor probe using FRET system was specifically expressed in endothelial cells, and then observed the living embryo with light-sheet microscope to visualize the blood pressure fluctuation. As a result, we succeeded in obtaining the FRET images of the pressure probe both in embryos with and without blood flow. However, the pressure fluctuation due to blood flow could not be visualized. We will continue to aim for visualization of pressure fluctuations by making some improvements.

Free Research Field

解剖学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究では、圧変動を可視化するFRETプローブを血管内皮特異的に発現する系統樹立に成功した。この系統では、Gal4-UASシステムを利用しており、Gal4の発現領域を変えることで血管系に限らず様々な組織の発生過程において圧プローブの発現が誘導可能であり、形態形成と圧負荷の関係解明に応用できる。現状では血圧の変動を可視化するには至っていないが、今後目標を達成することで血管形成メカニズムの解明に寄与する。