How cytoskeletal remodeling is coordinated across tissues during wound healing remains poorly understood. In this project, I use the transparent jellyfish Clytia hemisphaerica as a simple and optically accessible model to study how reactive oxygen species (ROS) regulate actin dynamics in vivo. Wounding naturally generates local oxidative signals, and by combining live fluorescence imaging with antioxidant perturbations, I observe ROS-dependent changes in actin organization at wound edges.
These experiments connect directly to my in vitro work: the same redox conditions that enhance actin turnover and assembly in purified systems also promote actin accumulation and remodeling in living tissue. This establishes a mechanistic bridge from minimal reconstituted systems to physiology and suggests that ROS function not only as stress byproducts but as local signals that coordinate cytoskeletal repair. More broadly, the project demonstrates how bottom-up physical mechanisms can scale to organism-level processes such as tissue regeneration.
Thomas Litschel 