Cardiac muscle cells enlarge in response to stresses such as hypertension. While this is beneficial at first, it can become problematic as it progresses. The processes for this are mostly unknown, but it has become clear that the immune system is involved. The role of the immune system in the early phase, however, is unclear.

Assistant Professor Xavier Revelo (Integrative Biology and Physiology) and Associate Professor Jop van Berlo (Medicine and MSI PI) are collaborating in a project intended to increase our understanding of the role that cardiac immune cells play in cardiac stress response, including early adaptive remodeling. They have created a multiple-dimensional dataset of >57,000 cells. The UMII Updraft program is funding work by Dr. Adam Herman from MSI’s RIS group to analyze the gene expression and cell epitope data from this set.

Research Computing partners:

• University of Minnesota Informatics Institute (funding)
• Minnesota Supercomputing Institute