Scientists investigate the role of the extracellular matrix in tissue growth

Growing from a single cell into a complex organism with specialized tissues and organs requires a complex and coordinated process. But the mechanical signals that guide tissue and organ development-cells pushing, pulling, compressing, and swelling against one another and their environment-remain mysterious.

Researchers from the University of Rochester's Department of Biomedical Engineering will shed new light on tissue and organ development by studying how cells interact mechanically with the extracellular matrix, a biological polymer produced by cells that acts like scaffolding for building more complicated structures. Assistant Professor Marisol Herrera-Perez received more than $2 million through a competitive Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to examine how cells and the extracellular matrix work together.

"Most of what we know about the mechanical signals for cellular development are those the cell produces itself, like when it twitches or contracts," notes Herrera-Perez. "But there are other forces that come from the environment and, perhaps most importantly, from the extracellular matrix."

Herrera-Perez and the students in her lab will study the extracellular matrix's viscoelastic properties that allow it to change dramatically during development, the feedback loops between cells and the extracellular matrix, and how a cell passes along a message to its nearest neighbor. They will use optogenetic techniques to turn on and off proteins in the cells of common fruit flies and observe the effects.

According to Herrera-Perez, understanding the fundamental principles of how life builds from an embryo into complex lifeform could provide important insight about developmental diseases, which are by nature difficult to study. It can also lead to practical applications in regenerative medicine for diseases that happen later in life.

"Many diseases that happen at the end of life or midlife are a recapitulation of processes gone wrong during development," she says. "Cancer or failed wound healing involve the same principles that guide an embryo's growth-just gone awry."