Human our bodies make 2 million pink blood cells per second. They every stay for 120 days and spend that point zooming fully across the physique each 20 seconds, carrying oxygen from the lungs to different tissues and bringing again carbon dioxide that’s exhaled.

Velia M. Fowler, professor and chair of the Department of Biological Sciences on the University of Delaware, can inform you virtually every little thing concerning the structure of these cells.

The disk-shaped cells have two dimples, one on either side, and are completely symmetric when at relaxation. In the blood stream, they flexibly deform and fold to squeeze via slim capillaries smaller than they’re, returning to their unique biconcave form after they emerge.

“I always liked the red cell shape because it’s just so beautiful,” Fowler stated. “I always wanted to figure out how it worked.”

Fowler’s lab at UD research cell structure and the way every cell’s inside structural scaffolding creates its distinctive form, mechanical power and physiological functions. This scaffolding is fabricated from a protein known as actin, which assembles into filaments (F-actin) that resemble a helical strand of beads. Unlike the structural scaffoldings in buildings, the F-actin in cells is dynamic, with actin subunits, “beads,” approaching and off the filament ends each second.

F-actin is a key regulator of mobile structure and the way applicable mobile types assist mobile features, in keeping with Fowler. Dysregulation of F-actin can result in modifications in cell shapes and biomechanics, which may contribute to a variety of illnesses together with blood issues, immunodeficiencies, muscle myopathies, cataracts, presbyopia, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis and tendinosis.

The lab research how the dynamic F-actin scaffolding creates specific cell shapes and the way this contributes to regular cell operate or dysfunction. The analysis is targeted on pink blood cells, the cells within the ocular lens and cells within the musculoskeletal system.

“We’re trying to understand the locations of F-actin structures [inside the cells], their dynamic organizations, shapes and the gradients of concentration, and how they contribute to cell functions. I just love that interplay,” Fowler stated.

Fowler and her crew are inspecting two totally different facets of F-actin in pink blood cells: how the pink blood cell precursors rearrange their F-actin to eliminate their nucleus, enabling the mature cells to flow into many instances via the tiny capillaries; and the way F-actin assembles into a skinny community on the membrane (pores and skin) of the cell and interacts with a motor protein known as myosin to regulate cell form and suppleness.

The work with the ocular lens research how F-actin buildings in lens cells contribute to lens transparency and focusing for imaginative and prescient. The analysis in bone, cartilage and tendon cells examines how F-actin buildings are maintained to forestall issues within the musculoskeletal system. The latter work is finished with the Delaware Center for Musculoskeletal Research Center.

The broad impression of F-actin in cells was one of many causes biomedical engineering doctoral pupil Heather Malino joined Fowler’s lab. She was interested in the foundational side of the analysis, moderately than specializing in sensible options to well being issues like prosthetics.

“Learning about the fundamental biological phenomenon that happens can be really rewarding because you’re looking at the cellular and molecular processes,” she stated. “You find out something about the lens, but cells are cells. So things that we learned about the lens, can also be more overarching to different processes in the body.”

Building on the previous

The work builds on groundbreaking discoveries associated to the F-actin community that Fowler has made all through her 40-year profession. As a post-doctoral fellow Fowler was the primary to find myosin in pink blood cells. Without myosin motors pulling on F-actin networks to create stress, the pink blood cell precursors wouldn’t be capable to generate sufficient power to expel their nucleus, and the mature cells wouldn’t be capable to stand up to the repetitive cycles of deformation, folding and unfolding required throughout their lifespan.

She additionally found a beforehand unknown protein known as tropomodulin. Tropomodulin stops the ends of the F-actin from rising or shrinking, stabilizing them at a sure size. When the filaments are the identical size, the networks they create when binding to different proteins in numerous sorts of cells are stronger and extra steady. If the filaments are totally different lengths, the networks are irregular and mechanically weaker, and cell shapes are irregular.

Fowler confirmed that tropomodulin’s operate is important for growth of the guts and blood cells, and for correct operate of many cells and tissues, together with eye lens, neurons within the mind, epithelial cells lining the intestine, endothelial cells lining blood vessels, in addition to platelets, red blood cells. It is required for environment friendly muscle contraction in each skeletal and cardiac muscular tissues.

“I started with a molecule that had a function in one tissue, and I thought the function had to happen in these other tissues,” she stated. “I connected the dots.”

Recently, Fowler was a part of a crew that found {that a} mutation within the tropomodulin proteins which prevents the protein from functioning correctly causes a extreme inherited cardiomyopathy in youngsters. This is the primary time the protein’s operate has been straight linked to coronary heart illness in people. The analysis was printed within the journal Communications Biology.

Fowler was lately acknowledged as a 2023 Lifetime Fellow of the American Society of Cell Biologists (ASCB), partly for her work on tropomodulin. She is one in every of 19 scientists from around the globe to obtain the respect this yr. The society contains the highest researchers within the discipline and counts a number of Nobel Prize winners as members.

“Dr. Fowler has advanced our understanding of fundamental questions in cell biology,” Jia Song, affiliate professor of organic sciences, stated in her letter nominating Fowler for the award. “Her groundbreaking work, published in more than 140 research articles, has significantly advanced our understanding of actin cytoskeletal function in architecture and behavior of diverse cells.”