{"id":2435,"date":"2024-04-18T12:19:35","date_gmt":"2024-04-18T16:19:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-ret\/?page_id=2435"},"modified":"2024-04-18T12:22:48","modified_gmt":"2024-04-18T16:22:48","slug":"blinking-heart-lights","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-ret\/blinking-heart-lights\/","title":{"rendered":"Blinking Heart Lights"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Project Description<\/span><\/strong><span><br \/>\n<\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span>Engineered cardiac tissues (ECT) derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells will spontaneously contract with a &#8220;heartbeat&#8221; caused by successive action potentials. The dynamics of that contractility can be used to evaluate tissue phenotype and to assess tissue health and maturation. One common way to evaluate contractility dynamics is to monitor deflection of compliant polymer structures anchoring the ECT. In the Bifano Lab, we pioneered a high-throughput platform to monitor that deflection for a large array of ECTs simultaneously. Another way to evaluate contractility dynamics is to monitor fluorescence of chemical indicators of calcium ions. Action potentials cause a rapid influx of calcium ions, and consequently a flash of light at each ECT heartbeat. The flash of light is dim, however, so the challenge in this project is to design a fluorescence imaging system capable of monitoring calcium transients in a large array of ECTs using the high-throughput platform.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Mentors<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n<p>Thomas Bifano &amp; <span>Francisco Sanchez<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"bu_collapsible_container \" aria-live=\"polite\" data-customize-animation=\"false\"><h4 class=\"bu_collapsible\" aria-expanded=\"false\"tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\">Research Goals<\/h4><div class=\"bu_collapsible_section\" style=\"display: none;\">\u2022 Model fluorescence excitation, emission, and optical imaging characteristics (e.g., numerical aperture of illumination and detection) of the high-throughput platform to estimate signal to noise expected in a practical implementation of the calcium imaging system.<br \/>\n\u2022 Experimentally verify fluorescence signaling dynamics for individual ECTs and arrays of ECTs.<br \/>\n\u2022 Correlate fluorescence dynamics with measured contractile force dynamics.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"bu_collapsible_container \" aria-live=\"polite\" data-customize-animation=\"false\"><h4 class=\"bu_collapsible\" aria-expanded=\"false\"tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\">Learning Goals<\/h4><div class=\"bu_collapsible_section\" style=\"display: none;\">\u2022 Understand fluorescence labeling, imaging, excitation physics, emission characteristics, and photobleaching.<br \/>\n\u2022 Learn practical optical design techniques, including microscopic imaging, spectral optical filtering, camera sensor sensitivity, efficiency, and temporal response characteristics.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Project Description Engineered cardiac tissues (ECT) derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells will spontaneously contract with a &#8220;heartbeat&#8221; caused by successive action potentials. The dynamics of that contractility can be used to evaluate tissue phenotype and to assess tissue health and maturation. One common way to evaluate contractility dynamics is to monitor deflection of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19768,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-ret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2435"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-ret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-ret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-ret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19768"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-ret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2435"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-ret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2440,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-ret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2435\/revisions\/2440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-ret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}