Researchers at U.Va. High blood pressure affects approximately 75 million Americans, about 25 percent of the population, and is also a major cause of stroke and heart disease. In addition to high blood pressure, the research team will focus on the involvement of smooth muscle proteins in asthma and other diseases of smooth muscle, as well as the importance of calcium in the development of ventricular fibrillation, the most common cause of sudden cardiac death. Calcium will be detected with a specialized electron microscope using methods developed in the laboratory of Somlyo and his wife, Avril V. Somlyo, professor of pathology and molecular physiology and biological physics at UVa.
Smooth muscle makes up the walls of internal organs, such as blood vessels and the digestive tract.
Blood pressure is regulated when the walls of the blood vessels contract or expand in response to certain chemicals in the blood. Using a highly sophisticated cryo-atomic force microscope that was developed by UVa biologist Zhifeng Shao, Somlyo and his group will study the effects of regulation on the structure of myosin molecules of smooth muscle. Another protein that will be examined is rhoA, which modulates calcium sensitivity of smooth muscles. Understanding the atomic structures of these proteins and their complexes with other molecules is important in determining the causes of various diseases and in developing drugs to treat them, Somylo said. For more information, call Andrew Somlyo, chairman of the molecular physiology and biological physics department at U.Va.