Superheroes and Supergadgets

We’ve all grown up with our own favorite superheroes. Maybe you spent endless hours curled up with the comic books of Wonder Woman, or secretly imagined what it would be like to defy the city skies as Spider-Man. But even if you’re not familiar with superhero comic books, it’s hard to miss their adventures on the big screen these days.

In this series, Wtnschp is creating a ‘Marvel/DC Universe’ of its own. Like most superheroes, VUB scientists are just ordinary people using their smarts and talents to do good in the world. And just like Batman is inextricably linked to his Batmobile, or Iron Man to his high-tech suit, our researchers have their own supergadgets. With the help of FWO funding, 8 VUB research groups have acquired some new high-tech equipment that will blow your mind. First up is research group NAVI with their beloved ‘Seahorse’.

Doctor who?

EXCITING NEWS

Our team is part of the research group Neuro-Aging & Viro-Immunotherapy or NAVI, at the faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy. Besides group leader Ann Massie, we have postdoc Gamze Ates, five PhD students and our technician Frank. And we’re always looking for new recruits … We all have one focus: xCT. That’s why we often call ourselves the ‘xCT team’! Our group has been studying xCT for almost 20 years and is still very exCiTed about it.

xCT is a protein that is present in our brain, in the cells of our immune system and on cancer cells. We showed that not having this protein is protective in mouse models for Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy. It can also be beneficial during aging. The latter observation is extremely relevant in an ever-aging society.

To understand why all this happens, we decided to have a deeper look at the ‘energy metabolism’ of cells when xCT is removed.

MEET SUPERVILLAIN xCT

Every cell has two engines that produce energy. Of course, these engines need fuel. A cell that can swiftly and efficiently switch from one engine or one fuel to another, is a cell that has the best chances to survive in changing conditions. Just like a hybrid car can switch to gas when it’s out of electricity, cells can switch fuel in case of fuel shortage or engine failure.

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” Cells that can efficiently switch from one engine or fuel to another, have the best chances to survive. “

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Today’s batmobile

Our new supergadget, the Seahorse, will help us to investigate this. It measures the energy production in cells and gives an indication on the importance of the different engines in this process. It also allows us to study how efficiently a cell can keep producing energy when it promptly needs to switch from one fuel to another, or from one engine to another.

This is not only important in brain cells and during the aging process, but can also be important in cancer cells, immune cells that become activated, etc. After all, every cell needs energy to survive and dysfunctional engines are a common characteristic of many diseases. This is why the purchase of this equipment is supported by researchers working in the field of immunology, cancer, toxicology, aging, etc.

The Seahorse XFe96 analyzer (left) coupled to its sidekick, the Cytation 1 cell imager (right).

Its superpower

The Seahorse with a detail of the 96-well plate. You can see four injection ports per well.

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“Tthe combination of the Seahorse and the cell imager gives high-quality, accurate measurements. “

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Changing engines

This is an example of what the Seahorse data can show. Here you can see the activity of two engines in the cell (the ‘red’ one, and the ‘blue’ one).

Let’s take a look at the scenario with the full lines, where both engines have enough fuel to work. After about 20 minutes, we started blocking the blue engine. You clearly see a drop in the blue line there, while the red one rises.

In short, when the blue engine is blocked, the activity of the red engine clearly picks up!

Thanks to its 96-well format, we can collect a huge amount of exCiTing data from a very small amount of sample. Another important superpower of the machine is the fact that it’s extremely user-friendly compared to other technologies that address ‘cell energetic’ questions. So, although it generates data in warp speed, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to use it.

Article cartoon: © Wtnschp, by Alan Jockmans
Stock images: © Shutterstock
Photos seahorse & graph: © NAVI research group