The regulation of peripheral vascular function

维持适当的血液流向细胞和组织至关重要。 血液流动是细胞和组织环境的调节器，由此血液流动既提供营养又去除废物。 充足的血液流向组织对于正常的细胞和组织功能以及健康至关重要。 血流与组织需求不匹配将导致细胞和组织衰竭和损伤。 维持组织内细胞的适当血流的一个重要部分是来自这些细胞的关于它需要多少血流量的通信。细胞需要在静息状态下传达它们对血流的需求，并在细胞更活跃时传达不同的需求，例如运动期间的骨骼肌细胞。 细胞如何与血管沟通，以协调适量的血液流动，以满足他们的需要还没有得到很好的理解。 我们的长期研究目标是确定组织细胞如何将其需求传达给血管，以保持足够的血流并确保适当的组织功能。 我们计划将骨骼肌和显微镜的使用联合收割机结合起来，直接可视化骨骼肌中的血管，并以不同的活动水平收缩骨骼肌细胞。 我们使用骨骼肌作为我们的测试组织，因为我们可以很容易地改变它的活动水平，并观察血管系统如何对这些不同的活动水平作出反应。 第一步是了解活跃的肌肉细胞如何向血管细胞发出信号，以传达其血流需求。 协调血液流动的第二步是使血管网络的细胞相互连通，以改变流向工作肌肉的血液。我们的研究计划将调查这个过程中的两个步骤。 * 这项研究计划正在产生与了解如何向组织提供足够的血流以维持健康的工作环境相关的知识。实现我们的研究目标将导致血流调节的基本过程的理解，可以扩展到任何组织。 了解血液流动调节的基本生理学是理解调节失灵时所导致的问题的关键的第一步。 一旦我们确定了调节的基础，该信息就可以用于解决血流问题，例如确定在必要时增加血流的方法（即，增加胎盘以增强胎儿健康或糖尿病患者的外周组织，或心力衰竭期间的心脏）或在必要时减少血流（即，在肿瘤血管系统中）。理解任何疾病状态的关键是首先了解在正常健康条件下过程如何工作。 我们的研究计划将有助于基本了解正常健康状态下的血流调节过程。此外，通过这些研究，该研究计划将通过提供严格和高质量的培训场所，为下一代综合生理学家的教育和培训做出贡献。

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.