Third party funded individual grant
Start date : 01.01.2017
End date : 31.12.2018
Skeletal muscle defines our motoric quality of life. There are hundreds of skeletal muscles but even more muscle diseases, either inherited or acquired. Although almost all muscle disorders manifest in a loss-of-function presenting with muscle weakness, cellular mechanims are very diverse and in most cases, not known. In order to define muscle performance mechanisms, biomechanical screening procedures elaborate and automated technologies are highly needed in the field of biomechatronics. Most biomechanics studies rely on force transducer technologies involving either whole muscles, muscle fibre bundles or single fibres. In addition, intact or skinned fibre preparations may be useful depending on the cellular level and mechanism to screen for. All commercially available systems usually are desgined to cover only a fraction of the organ level scale and still, researchers have to put strenous labour and effort into each single experimental run. Therefore, muscle research has become very selective in terms of research locations and feasibility due to the massive involvement of labour and time. When performing muscle biomechanics experiments, a high degree of automation could be implemented but, interestingly, has never seriously been done so most likely because muscle biologists and life science researchers have no access to sophisticated biomedical engineering facilities. We are currently combining muscle biomechanics research with biomedical engineering (applicant OF) to develop a fully-automated robotic force transducer system with a modular design that can be used to perform muscle performance experiments at most morphological levels of the organ (i.e. from whole muscles to single fibres) and test for active tension regimes (e.g. caffeine stimulation, electrical stimulation) and passive biomechanics (resting length-tension curves, slack test, etc.).
During the international collaboration our design will be successively improved further and validated during bilateral visits of the partners who are renowned experts in muscle biology (Erlangen/Sydney) and biomedical engineering (Erlangen). As relevant muscle performance model to be tested, we will focus on a specific mutation of a cytoskeleton protein that seems to turn slow muscle into fast muscle and has been termed ‘gene of speed’. About 20% of the world population carries this mutation that results in a complete lack of the gene product, alpha-actinin.
The specific scientific goals during this collaboration initiative are:
1. Further engineering, hardware and software expansion for our fully automated muscle force transducer MyoRobot to allow self-contained force recordings of muscle preparations (single fibres, fibre bundles, whole muscle) for muscle biomechanics; miniaturization of the system suitable for international transport (Erlangen)
2. Muscle biomechanics (active and passive) experiments (Erlangen), i.e.:
- pCa-force curves
- Resting length-tension curves, stretch-jump experiments
- Slack test experiments (unloaded speed of shortening)
3. To validate our biomechatronics system on the ‘gene of speed’ mouse model to explain molecular mechanisms associated with genetic increase in muscle performance in endurance athletes (for which the model serves) (Sydney)
4. To validate the intrinsically built-in optical imaging system with a parallel laser-beam analysis into a beam-splitter spearated image part of fibre thickness (for cross-sectional area normalization of force) and an online recording of the laser diffraction pattern induced by the biocrystal aspect of the muscle fibre to obtain online sarcomere lengths during recordings
To prepare translation of the ‘MyoRobot’ into commercial applicability (Erlangen/Sydney)