A new paper on calcium signaling of tissue-resident macrophages by members of the Rasmussen lab was accepted at Molecular Biology of the Cell. This paper highlights contributions of two Rasmussen lab members:

• First-author: Pearl A. Leon Guerrero - former undergraduate in the Rasmussen lab (biochem major) and member of the ENDURE program
• Senior author: Eric Peterman - Research scientist in the Rasmussen lab

Link to paper.

Congratulations, Peal, Eric, and Jeff!

Summary: 

Skin serves as a protective barrier from environmental trauma. When skin is damaged, immune cells are tasked with clearing debris to reduce inflammation and promote skin repair. There is a multitude of pathways that can modulate how immune cells respond to tissue damage. Among these pathways is calcium signaling, an understudied pathway in tissue damage due to technical challenges in other model systems. Adult zebrafish present many advantages to studying tissue damage, including transparent skin and genetic tools labeling immune cells and calcium activity with fluorescent markers. In this paper, we used these advantages to study how calcium signaling is involved in immune cell responses to tissue damage. We found that skin-resident immune cells exhibit spontaneous, transient calcium activity in uninjured conditions. Both the location and temporal dynamics of activity changes upon tissue damage. Last, we found that altering intracellular calcium levels perturbs immune cell ability to  espond to tissue damage. Altogether, our work uses the strengths of zebrafish as a model organism to  explore how calcium activity changes during tissue damage and sheds lights on requirements for calcium activity during skin repair.

Figure caption: 

Many signaling pathways must be integrated within immune cells to quickly respond to infection or tissue damage. Among these pathways is intracellular calcium signaling; however, physical impediments and technical constraints have limited our understanding of calcium dynamics within immune cells during homeostasis and tissue damage. Using the genetic and physiological advantages of adult zebrafish, Leon Guerrero et al. show that skin- resident immune cells known as Langerhans cells exhibit transient calcium activity during homeostasis and that tissue damage alters their spatiotemporal calcium activity. This micrograph shows Langerhans cells in skin (magenta) and one cell exhibiting elevated levels of intracellular calcium (cyan, lower right corner). Image: Pearl A. Leon Guerrero, University of Washington