Britya Ghosh

Performing under Pressure:

The role of mechanotrasnduction in physiological processes

Feeling the pressure!

All living organisms inevitably experience mechanical force in their surroundings in the form of touch. Interestingly, internal organs which are capable of undergoing deformation and stretch, such as the bladder, heart, or even the gut, involuntarily convey physiological states to the nervous system. PIEZO1 and PIEZO2 are the mechanosensory ion channels in mammals which play a role in relaying mechanical forces encountered by exteroceptive touch or interoceptive physiological processes such as bladder filling, baroreception, etc. These ion channels are indispensable in most living organisms and are implicated in a wide range of physiological processes.

My PhD research involves understanding the role of these ion channels in two distinct physiological processes: (1) tissue regeneration and (2) satiety induced by mechanical stretching of the gut

Project I: Pressure to regenerate!

Planarian flatworms Schmidtea mediterranea have incredible regenerative capacity. They can heal wounds by reprogramming the stem cell compartments to regenerate missing tissues. Wound healing sites encounter mechanical forces resulting from cell traction force generated from actin/myosin interactions. Mechanosensory and immunological pathways interact during these processes to dynamically counteract mechanical stress exerted by extracellular matrix and surrounding cells during healing. However, we dont know how the mechanosensory pathways interact with the healing process, which I am studying using the planarian flatworms.

Project II: Pressure induced by fullness sensing

We have all felt that filling feeling after a big meal. Anecdotally, the feeling of satiety induced after a big meal, is often accompanied by the uneasy feeling of stretch in the stomach. However, we still don't know about how mechanosensation in the gut relays a sense of satiety to the brain. To understand this I am investigating the role of PIEZO ion channels in feeding in both in mice and Schmidtea mediterranea.

Blast from the past!

Previously, as an MSc student I worked on delineating the lactic acid taste receptors in Drosophila melanogaster. We found that receptors belonging to two different families ionotropic receptor, and gustatory receptor coordinately mediate attraction towards lactic acid taste. (Stanley et al, 2021)