Yiwen Ding

Dematin is a cytoskeletal protein which is broadly expressed in most tissues. In erythrocytes, dematin helps maintain the cell shape and membrane stability. Previous studies showed that mice with a whole body dematin knock out showed severe hemolytic anemia and splenomegaly. Platelets use a similar mechanism to maintain cell shape. However, platelet-specific dematin knock out mice do not show a severe phenotype related to red blood cell shape change and hemolysis. This observation might suggest an important approach for treating clots. My project focuses on the effects of the platelet dematin knock out in shape change and the mechanisms involved. I will test these ideas using platelets from both wild type and PDKO mice and performing aggregation experiments. In this way, I hope to be able to see if the dematin knock out affects platelet shape change in the presence of different kinds of agonists. Also, I will track the activation of different enzymes involved in calcium mobilization, Akt activation and integrin signaling by Western Blot.