Biology subjects

Parker, I.

Publications and source records attributed to Parker, I..

11 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

ER and SOCE Ca2+ signals are not required for directed cell migration in human microglia

The central nervous system (CNS) is constantly surveilled by microglia, highly motile and dynamic cells deputed to act as the first line of immune defense in the brain and spinal cord. Alterations in the homeostasis of the CNS are detected by microglia that respond by migrating toward the affected area. Understanding the mechanisms controlling directed cell migration of microglia is crucial to dissect their responses to neuroinflammation and injury. We used a combination of pharmacological and genetic approaches to explore the involvement of calcium (Ca2+) signaling in the directed migration of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived microglia challenged with a purinergic stimulus. This approach mimics cues originating from injury of the CNS. Unexpectedly, simultaneous imaging of microglia migration and intracellular Ca2+ changes revealed that this phenomenon does not require Ca2+ signals generated from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and store-operated Ca2+ entry (SOCE) pathways. Instead, we find evidence that human microglial chemotaxis to purinergic signals is mediated by cyclic AMP in a Ca2+-independent manner. These results challenge prevailing notions, with important implications in neurological conditions characterized by perturbation in Ca2+ homeostasis.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

PIEZO1-HaloTag hiPSCs: Bridging Molecular, Cellular and Tissue Imaging

PIEZO1 is critical to numerous physiological processes, transducing diverse mechanical stimuli into electrical and chemical signals. Recent studies underscore the importance of visualizing endogenous PIEZO1 activity and localization to understand its functional roles. To enable physiologically and clinically relevant studies on human PIEZO1, we genetically engineered human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) to express a HaloTag fused to endogenous PIEZO1. Combined with advanced imaging, our chemogenetic platform allows precise visualization of PIEZO1 localization dynamics in various cell types. Furthermore, the PIEZO1-HaloTag hiPSC technology facilitates the non-invasive monitoring of channel activity across diverse cell types using Ca2+-sensitive HaloTag ligands, achieving temporal resolution approaching that of patch clamp electrophysiology. Finally, we used lightsheet imaging of hiPSC-derived neural organoids to achieve molecular scale imaging of PIEZO1 in three-dimensional tissue organoids. Our advances offer a novel platform for studying PIEZO1 mechanotransduction in human cells and tissues, with potential for elucidating disease mechanisms and targeted therapeutic development.

biophysics↗

bioRxiv2022

Intracellular injection of brain extracts from Alzheimer's disease patients trigger unregulated Ca2+ release from intracellular stores that hinders cellular bioenergetics

Strong evidence indicates that amyloid beta (A{beta}) inflicts its toxicity in Alzheimers disease (AD) by promoting uncontrolled elevation of cytosolic Ca2+ in neurons. We have previously shown that synthetic A{beta}42 oligomers stimulate abnormal intracellular Ca2+ release from the endoplasmic reticulum stores, suggesting that a similar mechanism of Ca2+ toxicity may be common to the endogenous A{beta}s oligomers. To investigate this possibility, we use human postmortem brain extracts from control and AD-affected patients and test their ability to trigger Ca2+ fluxes when injected intracellularly into Xenopus oocytes. Immunological characterization of samples from AD patients revealed elevated content of soluble A{beta} oligomers, detected by the conformation-dependent OC-antibody, whereas no immunoreactivity was detected in the normal samples. Intracellular injection of brain extracts from control patients failed to trigger detectable changes in intracellular Ca2+. Conversely, brain extracts from AD patients triggered Ca2+ events consisting of local and global Ca2+ fluorescent transients rising within few seconds after injection and persisting for several seconds. Pre-incubation of brain extracts with the conformation specific OC antibody completely suppressed brain extract ability to trigger cytosolic Ca2+ events. Comparison of the elementary events triggered by brain extracts and synthetic A{beta}42 oligomer showed comparable temporal evolution and amplitudes to events triggered by direct injection of IP3. Moreover, bath application of caffeine reversibly inhibited local and global Ca2+ signals in all the samples confirming the involvement of Ca2+ release from the ER. Analysis of the recorded Ca2+ fluorescence signals by computational modeling allowed quantification of the IP3 and Ca2+ generated by each sample. The model further shows that the abnormal increase of Ca2+ and IP3 may affect mitochondrial bioenergetics. These results, supports the hypothesis that endogenous amyloid oligomer contained in neurons of AD-affected brains may represent the toxic agents responsible for neurons malfunctioning and death, associated with the disruption of neuronal Ca2+ homeostasis.

cell biology↗

bioRxiv2022

Aβ42 and Aβ40 oligomers form transient and persistent pores with different time evolutions and toxicities

In Alzheimers disease (AD), formation of harmful self-gating pores formed by the insertion of amyloid beta oligomers (A{beta}Os) into the plasma membrane have been shown to cause disruption of Ca2+ homeostasis, leading to neuronal malfunctioning and degeneration. Among different isoforms, the most studied A{beta}40 and A{beta}42 are also believed to be the most toxic ones. Using single channel imaging, we show that both isoforms can form functionally distinct populations of Ca2+ permeable pores, we named transient and persistent pores. The transient pores could be seen only for a few tens of milliseconds, while persistent pores can be observed for more than an hour. However, while the Ca2+-toxicity of pores formed by A{beta}42Os tend to increase over time by displaying higher open probability and larger Ca2+ permeability, pores formed by A{beta}40Os show opposite time dependent behavior. We conclude that although both isoforms can form Ca2+ permeable pores in the cells plasma membrane, pores due to A{beta}42Os display worsening Ca2+ toxicity over time.

cell biology↗

bioRxiv2021

TREM2 regulates purinergic receptor-mediated calcium signaling and motility in human iPSC-derived microglia

The membrane protein TREM2 (Triggering Receptor Expressed on Myeloid cells 2) regulates key microglial functions including phagocytosis and chemotaxis. Loss-of-function variants of TREM2 are associated with increased risk of Alzheimers disease (AD). Because abnormalities in Ca2+ signaling have been observed in several AD models, we investigated TREM2 regulation of Ca2+ signaling in human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived microglia (iPSC-microglia) with genetic deletion of TREM2. We found that iPSC-microglia lacking TREM2 (TREM2 KO) show exaggerated Ca2+ signals in response to purinergic agonists, such as ADP, that shape microglial injury responses. This ADP hypersensitivity, driven by increased expression of P2Y12 and P2Y13 receptors, results in greater release of Ca2+ from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stores, which triggers sustained Ca2+ influx through Orai channels and alters cell motility in TREM2 KO microglia. Using iPSC-microglia expressing the genetically encoded Ca2+ probe, Salsa6f, we found that cytosolic Ca2+ tunes motility to a greater extent in TREM2 KO microglia. Despite showing greater overall displacement, TREM2 KO microglia exhibit reduced directional chemotaxis along ADP gradients. Accordingly, the chemotactic defect in TREM2 KO microglia was rescued by reducing cytosolic Ca2+ using a P2Y12 receptor antagonist. Our results show that loss of TREM2 confers a defect in microglial Ca2+ response to purinergic signals, suggesting a window of Ca2+ signaling for optimal microglial motility.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

CellSpecks: A Software for Automated Detection and Analysis of Calcium Channels in Live Cells

To couple the fidelity of patch-clamp recording with a more high-throughput screening capability, we pioneered a novel approach to single channel recording that we named \"optical patch clamp\". By using highly-sensitive fluorescent Ca2+ indicator dyes in conjunction with total internal fluorescence microscopy techniques, we monitor Ca2+ flux through individual Ca2+-permeable channels. This approach provides information about channel gating analogous to patch-clamp recording at time resolution of ~ 2 ms, with the additional advantage of being massively parallel, providing simultaneous and independent recording from thousands of channels in native environment. However, manual analysis of the data generated by this technique presents severe challenges as a video recording can include many thousands of frames. To overcome this bottleneck, we developed an image processing and analysis framework called CellSpecks, capable of detecting and fully analyzing the kinetics of ion channels within a video sequence. By using a randomly generated synthetic data, we tested the ability of CellSpecks to rapidly and efficiently detect and analyze the activity of thousands of ion channels, including openings for a few milliseconds. Here, we report the use of CellSpecks for the analysis of experimental data acquired by imaging muscle nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and the Alzheimers disease-associated amyloid beta pores with multiconductance levels in the plasma membrane of Xenopus laevis oocytes. We show that CellSpecks can accurately and efficiently generate location maps, create raw and processed fluorescence time-traces, histograms of mean open times, mean close times, open probabilities, durations, and maximum amplitudes, and a channel chip showing the activity of all channels as a function of time. Although we specifically illustrate the application of CellSpecks for analyzing data from Ca2+ channels, it can be easily customized to analyze other spatially and temporally localized signals.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2018

TraceSpecks: a software for automated idealization of noisy patch-clamp and imaging data

Experimental records of single molecules or ion channels from fluorescence microscopy and patch-clamp electrophysiology often include high-frequency noise and baseline fluctuations that are not generated by the system under investigation and have to be removed. More-over, multiple channels or conductance levels can be present at a time in the data that need to be quantified to accurately understand the behavior of the system. Manual procedures for removing these fluctuations and extracting conducting states or multiple channels are laborious, prone to subjective bias, and hinder the processing of often very large data-sets. We introduce a maximum likelihood formalism for separating signal from a noisy and drifting background such as fluorescence traces from imaging of elementary Ca2+ release events called puffs arising from clusters of channels and patch-clamp recordings of ion channels. Parameters such as the number of open channels or conducting states, noise level, and back-ground signal can all be optimized using the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm. We implement our algorithm following the Baum-Welch approach to EM in the portable java language with a user-friendly graphical interface and test the algorithm on both synthetic and experimental data from patch-clamp electrophysiology of Ca2+ channels and fluorescence microscopy of a cluster of Ca2+ channels and Ca2+ channels with multiple conductance levels. The resulting software is accurate, fast, and provides detailed information usually not available through manual analysis. Options for visual inspection of the raw and processed data with key parameters, and exporting a range of statistics such as the mean open probabilities, mean open times, mean close times, and dwell time distributions for different number of channels open or conductance levels, amplitude distribution of all opening events, and number of transitions between different number of open channels or conducting levels in asci format with a single click are provided.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2018

Piezo1 calcium flickers localize to hotspots of cellular traction forces

Piezo channels transduce mechanical stimuli into electrical and chemical signals, and in doing so, powerfully influence development, tissue homeostasis, and regeneration. While much is known about how Piezo1 responds to external forces, its response to internal, cell-generated forces remains poorly understood. Here, using measurements of endogenous Piezo1 activity and traction forces in native cellular conditions, we show that actomyosin-based cellular traction forces generate spatially-restricted Ca2+ flickers in the absence of externally-applied mechanical forces. Although Piezo1 channels diffuse readily in the plasma membrane and are widely distributed across the cell, their flicker activity is enriched in regions proximal to force-producing adhesions. The mechanical force that activates Piezo1 arises from Myosin II phosphorylation by Myosin Light Chain Kinase. We propose that Piezo1 Ca2+ flickers allow spatial segregation of mechanotransduction events, and that diffusion allows channel molecules to efficiently respond to transient, local mechanical stimuli.

biophysics↗

bioRxiv2017

Intermittent Ca2+ signals mediated by Orai1 regulate basal T cell motility

Ca2+ influx through Orai1 channels is crucial for several T cell functions, but a role in regulating basal cellular motility has not been described. Here we show that inhibition of Orai1 channel activity increases average cell velocities by reducing the frequency of pauses in human T cells migrating through confined spaces, even in the absence of extrinsic cell contacts or antigen recognition. Utilizing a novel ratiometric genetically encoded cytosolic Ca2+ indicator, Salsa6f, which permits real-time monitoring of cytosolic Ca2+ along with cell motility, we show that spontaneous pauses during T cell motility in vitro and in vivo coincide with episodes of cytosolic Ca2+ signaling. Furthermore, lymph node T cells exhibited two types of spontaneous Ca2+ transients: short-duration \"sparkles\" and longer duration global signals. Our results demonstrate that spontaneous and self-peptide MHC-dependent activation of Orai1 ensures random walk behavior in T cells to optimize immune surveillance.

immunology↗

bioRxiv2017

T Cell Calcium Dynamics Visualized in a Ratiometric tdTomato-GCaMP6f Transgenic Reporter Mouse

Calcium is an essential cellular messenger that regulates numerous functions in living organisms. Here we describe development and characterization of \"Salsa6f\", a fusion of GCaMP6f and tdTomato optimized for cell tracking while monitoring cytosolic Ca2+, and a transgenic Ca2+ reporter mouse with Salsa6f floxed and targeted to the Rosa26 locus for expression in specific cell types. Using CD4-Cre-Salsa6f mice, we report normal development and function of T cells expressing Salsa6f and demonstrate Ca2+ signaling dynamics during T cell receptor engagement in naive T cells, helper Th17 T cells and regulatory T cells. Salsa6f expression also revealed functional expression of mechanosensitive Piezo1 channels in T cells. Transgenic expression of Salsa6f enables ratiometric imaging of Ca2+ signals in complex tissue environments found in vivo. Deep tissue two-photon imaging of T cells in the steady-state lymph node revealed a highly localized Ca2+ signaling behavior (\"sparkles\") as cells migrate.

cell biology↗

bioRxiv2017

Cell-intrinsic activation of Orai1 regulates human T cell motility

Ca2+ signaling through the store-operated Ca2+ channel, Orai1, is crucial for T cell function, but a role in regulating T cell motility in lymph nodes has not been previously reported. Tracking human T cells in immunodeficient mouse lymph nodes and in microfabricated PDMS channels, we show that inhibition of Orai1 channel activity with a dominant-negative Orai1-E106A construct increases average T cell velocities by reducing the frequency of pauses in motile T cells. Orai1-dependent motility arrest occurs spontaneously during confined motility in vitro, even in the absence of extrinsic cell contacts or antigen recognition. Utilizing a novel ratiometric genetically encoded cytosolic Ca2+ indicator, Salsa6f, we show these spontaneous pauses during T cell motility in vitro coincide with episodes of spontaneous cytosolic Ca2+ signaling. Our results demonstrate that Orai1, activated in a cell-intrinsic manner, regulates T cell motility patterns that accompany immune surveillance.

cell biology↗