Third party funded individual grant
Start date : 01.06.2014
End date : 31.12.2015
Combined electrophysiological/optical approaches can predict properties and spatial distribution of local ion concentrations and channel distributions within complex skeletal muscle cytoarchitecture. However, experimental applications to muscle diseases remain scarce which hampers our knowledge to develop technologies to counteract on muscle weakness in affected individuals. Advanced imaging technologies provide novel tools to (i) directly obtain the spatial distribution of specified ion channels in the t-system in normal muscle and (ii) correlate altered expression patterns to the remodeling of cytoarchitecture in chronic muscle diseases. In this project, we will employ high-end biophotonics to quantify ultrastructure morphometry in living muscle cells using second-harmonic generation (SHG) and 3D-immunofluorescence microscopy and electrophysiology for given ion channel species in muscle cells from healthy and diseased muscle. As a disease model, we will choose muscles from aged mdx mice since muscular dystrophy is known to present a vast phenotype of abnormal morphology with age.