Project I

Project I Team

Stephanie Watts

Full Professor, Dept of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Director of the PPG, Project I Leader, Core A Leader

Director of Project I. Stephanie’s contribution is to bring the smaller and seemingly disparate pieces of information into a larger, integrated picture. She also helps us stay connected to the other projects of this PPG effort, helping to feed information to and from such that the science of all projects informs that of the others.

Sara Roccabianca

Associate Professor, Dept of Mechanical Engineering
Project I Co-Leader, Project IV Collaborator

Sara is the head engineer of this project (!) and provides the knowledge needed to think about PVAT as a tissue that should be considered mechanically. She was and is essential to thinking about PVAT in this novel way.

Beth Lockwood

Assistant Professor, Dept of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Core B Leader

Beth has been a long term scientist at MSU. Her part of Project I is to develop and use various techniques to investigate new functions of PVAT

Carolina Restini

Assistant Professor, Dept of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Core B Leader

Dr. Restini is an Associate Professor in the Dept of PHM/TOX. Her research in the PVAT PPG pertains to understanding the function of PVAT in the renal vasculature, as well as testing he hypothesis that a microbiome exists in PVAT. She has specific expertise in vessel contractility.

Teresa Krieger-Burke

Assistant Prof, Dept of Pharmacology and Toxicology, In Vivo Facility Director
Project I Collaborator, Core D Collaborator

Dr. Krieger-Burke will facilitate measurement of pulse wave velocity and other whole animal measures important to the PPG.

Dillon McClintock

Graduate Student
Project I member

Dillon is a graduate student in the Roccabianca lab. She is a critical part of the team building, with Core D, a new instrument that will allow us to reproducibly measure deformation and thus have a solid platform on which to build our mechanistic experiments.

Janice M. Thompson

Research Associate
Project I Member

Long term research associate of the Watts lab. Janice is dedicated to Western analyses (she excels at protein work), small vessel work +/-PVAT and RT-PCR. Her long terms knowledge of this lab and of MSU helps us be better in everything we do.

Project I is purposefully crafted to be at the center of this PPG application. By studying the whole tissue, it integrates knowledge of the neurohumoral (Project II), immune (Project III) and adipocyte potential (Project IV) into a working model.

Project I and III will work together to understand the functional impact an active (stretched) immune cell community and its environment has on the two new mechanisms studied by Project I, PVAT mechanotransduction and stiffness. Similarly, the impact of stretch on the fate of adipocyte progenitors (Project IV) parallels Project I’s commitment to understanding the effect of stretch on PVAT mechanical functioning.

We NEED our cores!

Core B (animal) provides all models our group uses.
Core C provides feedback information learned from experiments in other Projects to inform us of particular molecules/cell types we should consider in mechanotransduction and stiffness experiments.
Core D (microscopy) helps us take expert images.

Mission

Project I Team

Stephanie Watts

Sara Roccabianca

Beth Lockwood

Carolina Restini

Teresa Krieger-Burke

Dillon McClintock

Janice M. Thompson

Integration with other projects

We NEED our cores!

Publications

A cell atlas of thoracic aortic perivascular adipose tissue: a focus on mechanotransducers

Innervation of adipocytes is limited in mouse perivascular adipose tissue

Integrins play a role in stress relaxation of perivascular adipose tissue

Anatomical location, sex, and age modulate adipocyte progenitor populations in perivascular adipose tissues

Perivascular Adipose Tissue Remodels Only after Elevation of Blood Pressure in the Dahl SS Rat Fed a High-Fat Diet

A Cell Atlas of Thoracic Aortic Perivascular Adipose Tissue: a focus on mechanotransducers

Blood pressure changes PVAT function and transcriptome: use of the mid-thoracic aorta coarcted rat.

Interleukin-10 does not contribute to the anti-contractile nature of PVAT in health.

Phenotypic Changes in T Cell and Macrophage Subtypes in Perivascular Adipose Tissues Precede High-Fat Diet-Induced Hypertension.

Male and female high-fat diet-fed Dahl SS rats are largely protected from vascular dysfunctions: PVAT contributions reveal sex differences.

Identification of Piezo1 channels in perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT) and their potential role in vascular function.

Aortic stiffness is lower when perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT) is included: a novel ex vivo mechanics study.

Protocols

PVAT protein isolation42022

Collagenase Digestion of PVAT for Adipocyte Isolation