Exercising muscle in a dish

Movement is natural to us. From slowly crawling out of bed to the occasional dash to catch the bus, our muscles are hardwired to mechanically comply to our command. It is therefore easy to overlook the extent of the stress and strain they endure as a biological system. And despite an architecture geared for contraction, our muscles are prone to ripping and tearing. In this project, we will mimic the damage that occurs during exercise in in vitro muscle cultures using optogenetics. By reproducing injuries in a dish, we will strip all the barriers separating us from the cells we are observing. This will allow us to monitor how cells repair their damage with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. We will first assess how cells change their behavior after damage using a panel of cell biology and microscopy tools. We will also identify which repair genes are upregulated and determine when and where they are expressed using sequencing and imaged-based spatial genomic techniques. The ultimate objective is to find a master regulator of the repair transcriptional program which we can then modulate to preserve muscle function. We will then be able to improve muscle health in myopathies, after exercise and during aging but other outcomes could also surface for in vitro meat production or preserving muscle in space flight. Find out more about the lab at: www.romanlab.org Techniques: tissue engineering, RNA-sequencing, microscopy, cell biology and spatial transcriptomics.