Mechanotransduction, homeostasis and disease in the vascular system

The purpose of the vascular system, pumping blood to the tissues, is fundamentally mechanical.  Cells of vessel walls thus use shear stress from blood flow and wall stress/strain from blood pressure as cues to guide embryonic morphogenesis and adult homeostasis.  I will present our latest unpublished work on the molecule mechanisms that guide these processes, a new method to apply defined forces to proteins on a biochemical scale, and how we have harnessed information from these studies to combat vascular inflammatory disease