New teams, new ideas, new momentum
This seminar is part of an initiative to foster integration, visibility, and scientific exchange within the Toulouse research community.
Anabela Bensimon-Brito
Center for Integrative Biology, Toulouse
Decoding Tissue Homeostasis and Regeneration in the Zebrafish Heart
The heart is a remarkably resilient organ, constantly adapting to mechanical forces while maintaining precise structure and function. In our lab, we seek to understand how cardiac tissues preserve their integrity, why they sometimes fail, and how they can regenerate.
A major driver of cardiovascular disease is the abnormal deposition of minerals in soft tissues, leading to calcification. Although this process is common in aging and disease, the cellular players and signaling pathways that initiate it remain unclear. Using genetic models, single-cell RNA sequencing, and tissue analysis in zebrafish, we dissect how distinct cell populations lose homeostasis and trigger pathological remodeling.
We find that calcification is preceded by coordinated changes across multiple cell types, including cell death, immune cell recruitment, and expansion of structural cells that remodel the extracellular matrix. Strikingly, when we compare these pathological conditions to regenerative models, similar cell types adopt very different molecular programs, either promoting tissue repair or driving degeneration.
In this talk, I will also show how we leverage the powerful imaging capabilities of the zebrafish model to directly visualize how these processes unfold in living organisms and to perform large-scale chemical screens aimed at identifying new targets that could shift the balance from disease back toward homeostasis.
Selected references
- Bensimon-Brito et al. TGF-β Signaling Promotes Tissue Formation during Cardiac Valve Regeneration in Adult Zebrafish. Dev Cell (2020) 10.1016/j.devcel.2019.10.027
- Gunawan et al. Nfatc1 Promotes Interstitial Cell Formation During Cardiac Valve Development in Zebrafish (2020) Circ Res 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.119.315992
- Bensimon-Brito et al. Integration of multiple imaging platforms to uncover cardiovascular defects in adult zebrafish (2022) Cardiovasc Res 10.1093/cvr/cvab310