Amber Stratman, PhD

Description of Research:

The work in my lab aims to undercover the mechanosensitive signaling ‘tool kits’ used by individual cells to pattern tissues. My group largely uses vascular development as a model to address this vital question— exploiting complementary in vitro modeling and in vivo zebrafish live imaging and genomics techniques. These highly specialized tools give us the unique opportunity to study tissue assembly in real-time and with cellular level resolution. I am an expert in zebrafish biology and developed 3D in vitro modeling assays of mural cell-endothelial cell interactions that mimic the maturation of the vascular wall and capillary networks. Mural cells are a multifaceted perivascular cell population, play a critical role in promoting blood vessel stabilization, regulating vascular tone, and promoting barrier function over time, particularly in response to changes in blood flow. While my lab largely focuses our research on the areas of mural cell form/function, blood flow mediated gene regulation, and signaling pathways altering endothelial cell function in varying microenvironments, we are starting to turn our focus to the broader implications of our work to determine if the mechanosensitive signaling pathways we have uncovered in the vasculature are generalizable to other tissue. Utilization of our tools in zebrafish to study early tissue patterning, will provide new insights into mechanosensitive signaling pathways and how they are regulated.

Lab Website