Understanding how metabolic fluxes and gene expression can be turned on or off in a concerted manner is crucial to unravel the molecular mechanisms underlying physiological metabolic homeostasis and what goes awry in disease. Depicting possible metabolic re-programming also provide information on how biological systems react to environmental stimuli. Hypoxic Analysis of Cell Behaviour (Hyp-ACB) is a complex infrastructure able to measure, under normoxic and hypoxic conditions, the metabolic activity of living cells, with particular attention to the respiratory activity of mitochondria, in parallel with analysis of gene expression. The unique capability to monitor simultaneously cell metabolism and gene expression under variable oxygen tensions, allow to reproduce more closely the cell or tissue microenvironment(s) in both physiological and pathological conditions. Possible applications of this technology include multiple areas of biological research, spanning from molecular oncology, cardiovascular diseases, immunology, neurodegeneration, metabolic disorders, ageing, stem cells and tissue engineering, host-pathogen interactions, toxicology, drug discovery, environmental biology, bioengineering, food industry etc. Hyp-ACB is based on the scientific and technological multidisciplinary expertise already available in the Department, including redox biochemistry, kinetics of respiratory processes and cancer metabolism.
An overview of the facility and selected examples of applications will be presented.
June 4 2020, 12 am online
Prof. Serena Rinaldo - Dipartimento di Scienze Biochimiche - Sapienza Università di Roma
https://meet.google.com/gbs-swyw-hxp