Hearty Fish Tales

My research is focused on studying biophysical and molecular mechanisms underlying Congestive Heart Failure (CHF). With the patho-physiological progression of CHF, the heart wall dilates and is unable to generate adequate force as required by the body. This results in dysfunctional transmural distribution of stresses and strains in the cardiac wall. It is a technical challenge to image and functionally assess the role of cardiac fiber orientation and sarcomere length in an intact heart towards generating these forces. This image is a Z-stack of an intact contracting ex vivo Zebrafish heart (1*2mm), expressing Red Fluorescent Protein (RFP) under Myosin Light Chain (MLC) promoter, captured via state-of-art 2-Photon Confocal imaging enabling deep tissue visualization. The image illustrates a z axis-map of the orientation of the cardiac muscle fibers at a penetration depth of 50,100,150 and 200 μm as represented by individual colors.