From left: Postdoctoral Fellow Jules Devaux and Principal Investigators Associate Professor Tony Hickey and Dr David Crossman
The Marsden grant awarded to a project using super-resolution microscopy to understand temperature induced failure of heart mitochondria.
Dr David Crossman from the Department of Physiology has been awarded a Marsden project titled ‘Mitochondria break the hot heart, but what breaks hot mitochondria?’ along with colleague Associate Professor Tony Hickey from School of Biological Sciences. In this research, they will elucidate what causes heart mitochondria to fail at different critical temperatures across a family of fishes, the wrasses, which have evolved at different ocean temperatures in New Zealand and the tropics. Their previous research has identified that heart mitochondria fail just below the wrasses thermal limits and is a cause of concern as the oceans warm due to climate change.
An important objective of their project is to track the structural changes in live mitochondria as they are heated to above their failure point. This research has been made possible by the recent investment of the Biomedical Research Unit in state-of-the-art super-resolution microscopy that will allow the team to resolve mitochondrial cristae a critical organelle structure that cannot be resolved with conventional light microscopy. Further details on the project can be found in the 2020 Marsden Fund highlights.