Integrative cardiorespiratory physiology

循环系统是所有脊椎动物的基本生命支持系统。心脏为这个生命维持系统提供能量。因此，心脏的设计和功能可以决定动物如何补偿，耐受和适应环境。我的愿景是解决一个中心问题：哪些心血管特征允许在特定环境中生存？人们正在寻求使鱼类能够在极其多样化和不断变化的环境中生存的机制，特别强调过度变暖和缺氧。 考虑到北极，温带和热带鱼类，以及不寻常的鱼类，耐受长期缺氧/缺氧。实验方法的范围从整个动物的体内研究到电生理机制的细胞研究。具体的实验将检查缺氧不耐受的鳟鱼心脏，它可以预处理提高缺氧耐受性，和原始的八目鳗心脏，它通过抑制活性通过未知的机制缺氧生存数天。这些低氧存活的研究将集中在硫化氢作为心脏内源性代谢调节剂的潜在作用上。此外，还将探索鲫鱼和金鱼心脏在缺氧状态下持续数月正常跳动的独特能力。然而，大多数鱼的心脏是缺氧不耐受的。因此，目前对鲑鱼体温上限的假设是，工作心脏的氧气不足会引发心脏衰竭。研究将检查是否是这种情况，是什么设定了最大心率，以及在缺氧期间呼吸空气的鱼类中冠状动脉循环的作用。从这个基础研究计划的发现有可能找到应用与生态学家谁希望知道水生动物的分布是如何限制他们的环境，渔业管理人员谁寻求更好的工具来保护野生鱼类，以及那些谁是在全球变暖对地球的水生栖息地的影响感兴趣。

The circulatory system is an essential life support system for all vertebrates. The heart powers this life support system. Consequently, cardiac design and function can determine how animals compensate for, tolerate and adapt to their environment. My vision is to address a central question: What cardiovascular features permit life in a particular environment? Mechanisms are sought that permit fish survival in extremely diverse and changing environments, with a special emphasis on excessive warming and oxygen deprivation. Consideration is given to Arctic, temperate and tropical fishes, as well as unusual fishes that tolerant prolonged hypoxia/anoxia. The experimental approaches range from in vivo studies with whole animals through to cellular studies of electrophysiological mechanisms. Specific experiments will examine the hypoxia-intolerant trout heart, which can be pre-conditioned improve hypoxia tolerance, and the primitive hagfish heart, which survives anoxia for days by suppressing activity via unknown mechanisms. These studies of hypoxic survival will focus on the role that hydrogen sulphide potentially plays as an endogenous metabolic regulator of the heart. In addition, the remarkable and unique ability of the crucian carp and goldfish hearts to beat normally for months during anoxia will be explored. Most fish hearts, however, are hypoxia-intolerant. Thus, a current hypothesis for the upper thermal limit of salmon is that oxygen insufficiency for the working heart triggers cardiac collapse. Studies will examine whether or not this is the case, what sets maximum heart rate and the role of the coronary circulation in fishes that breathe air during hypoxia. Discoveries from this basic research program have the potential to find applications with ecologists who wish to known how aquatic animal distributions are limited by their environment, fisheries managers who seek better tools to conserve wild fish, and those who are interested in the impacts of global warming on the earth's aquatic habitats.