The regulation of peripheral vascular function

维持适当的血液流向细胞和组织是至关重要的。血液流动是细胞和组织环境的调节器，因此血液流动既提供营养又清除废物。充足的血液流向组织对正常的细胞和组织功能和健康至关重要。与组织需求不匹配的血液流动将导致细胞和组织的衰竭和损伤。维持组织内细胞的适当血流量的一个重要部分是这些细胞之间的沟通，告诉它们需要多少血流量。细胞需要在休息状态下传达它们对血液流动的需求，当细胞更活跃时，例如，在运动时，骨骼肌细胞需要传达不同的需求。细胞如何与血管沟通以协调适量的血液流动以满足其需要尚不清楚。我们的长期研究目标是确定组织细胞如何将它们的需求传达给血管，以维持足够的血液流动并确保适当的组织功能。我们计划结合骨骼肌和显微镜的使用，直接可视化骨骼肌中的血管，并在不同的活动水平上收缩骨骼肌细胞。我们使用骨骼肌作为测试组织，因为我们可以很容易地改变它的活动水平，观察血管系统对这些不同活动水平的反应。第一步是了解活跃的肌肉细胞如何向血管细胞发出信号，以传达它们的血液流动需求。协调血液流动的第二步是让血管网络的细胞相互交流，以改变血液流向工作肌肉。我们的研究计划将调查这一过程中的两个步骤。

It is critical to maintain proper blood flow to cells and tissues. Blood flow is a regulator of the cell and tissue environment whereby blood flow both supplies nutrients and removes waste products. Adequate blood flow to tissues is critical for normal cellular and tissue function and health. Mismatching blood flow to tissue demand will result in cellular and tissue failure and damage. An important part of maintain proper blood flow to cells within a tissue is communication from those cells as to what amount of blood flow it requires. Cells need to communicate their needs for blood flow under resting conditions and communicate different needs when the cells are more active, for example, skeletal muscle cells during exercise. How cells communicate with blood vessel in order to coordinate the right amount of blood flow to satisfy their needs is not well understood. Our long term research goals are to determine how cells of tissues communicate their needs to blood vessels in order to maintain adequate blood flow and ensure proper tissue function. We plan to combine the use of skeletal muscle and microscopy to visualize blood vessels in skeletal muscle directly and contract skeletal muscle cells at different levels of activity. We use skeletal muscle as our test tissue because we can change its activity level easily and watch how the vasculature responds to these different activity levels. The first step is to understand how active muscle cells signal the cells of the blood vessels to communicate their blood flow needs. The second step in coordinating blood flow is to have the cells of the blood vessel network intercommunicate to change blood flow to the working muscles. Our research program will investigate both steps in the process. This research program is generating knowledge relevant to understanding how adequate blood flow is supplied to tissues to maintain a healthy working environment. Achieving our research goals will lead to an understanding of the basic processes of blood flow regulation that can be expanded to any tissue. Understanding the basic physiology of the regulation of blood flow is the critical first step in understanding problems that result when the regulation is malfunctioning. Once we determine the basis of regulation this information can be used to solve problems with blood flow such as to identify ways to increase blood flow when necessary (i.e. to the placenta to enhance fetal health or to the peripheral tissue in a diabetic patient, or to the heart during heart failure) or decrease blood flow if necessary (i.e. in tumor vasculature). Critical to the understanding of any disease state is to first understand how processes work under normal healthy conditions. Our research program will contribute to the fundamental understanding the processes of blood flow regulation in the normal healthy state. In addition, through these studies, this research program will contribute to both the education and training of the next generation of integrated physiologists by providing a rigorous and high quality training ground.