Mechapattern Lab

Cells can detect mechanical signals from their environment and respond by initiating various genetic and biochemical signaling cascades that influence cellular differentiation and functionality. This connection, which remains poorly explored, must play a very important role during embryonic development and organ formation, as embryonic cells are markedly dynamic in nature, constantly moving, undergoing significant changes in their conformation, and being in contact with very different environments that exert distinct forces upon them. However, we do not yet understand how these forces are integrated at the genetic and molecular level, nor what type of memory cells use to faithfully propagate mechanical or geometric changes. The objective of the laboratory is, therefore, to find out how external mechanical forces are translated into different cellular and nuclear conformational states and, consequently, into gene regulation signals during early vertebrate embryonic development.

• Identify other proteins with mechanosensitive characteristics, which would make up the cellular «connexome,» responsible for transmitting information from the environment to the cell.
• Understand how different nuclear geometries and the mechanical forces of the substrate impact the global epigenome, which we will define as a set of mechanosensitive gene regulatory regions (mGRRs).
• Identify changes in the cell’s mechanosensor apparatus using high-resolution microscopy techniques and connect them with the differential use of these mGRRs under various mechanical perturbations.

1. Mechanosensitive gene regulation and cellular apparatus during zebrafish gastrulation.
2. Tissue tension and cellular geometries in eye formation.
3. Mechanical boundaries of embryogenesis.
4. Optimization of mechanical parameters for organoid generation.