{"doi":"10.1101/2025.02.05.636757","title":"Swimming motions evoke Ca <sup>2+</sup> events in vascular endothelial cells of larval zebrafish via mechanical activation of Piezo1","abstract":"Summary Calcium signaling in blood vessels regulates their growth 1,2 , immune response 3 , and vascular tone 4 . Vascular endothelial cells are known to be mechanosensitive 5–7 , and it has been assumed that this mechanosensation mediates calcium responses to pulsatile blood flow 8–10 . Here we show that in larval zebrafish, the dominant trigger for vascular endothelial Ca 2+ events comes from body motion, not heartbeat-driven blood flow. Through a series of pharmacological and mechanical perturbations, we showed that body motion is necessary and sufficient to induce endothelial Ca 2+ events, while neither neural activity nor blood circulation is either necessary or sufficient. Knockout and temporally restricted knockdown of piezo1 eliminated the motion-induced Ca 2+ events. Our results demonstrate that swimming-induced tissue motion is an important driver of endothelial Ca 2+ dynamics in larval zebrafish. Highlights Swimming motions in larval zebrafish evoke large, rapid, and pervasive Ca 2+ transients in vascular endothelial cells. These Ca 2+ transients do not require neural firing, muscular electrical activity, endocrine factors, or heart-driven blood flow. Mechanical forces are necessary and sufficient for endothelial Ca 2+ transients. Endothelial Ca 2+ transients require the mechanosensitive ion channel Piezo1.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2025,"id":555999,"datarank":0.16479184330021646,"base_score":1.0986122886681096,"endowment":1.0986122886681096,"self_citation_contribution":0.16479184330021646,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.16479184330021646,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":2,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9581,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":771723,"name":"Xin Tang","orcid":"0000-0002-9237-7109","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":664947,"name":"Marlies P. Rossmann","orcid":"0000-0003-2056-6792","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":49576,"name":"Leonard I. Zon","orcid":"0000-0003-0860-926X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":125625,"name":"Florian Engert","orcid":"0000-0001-8169-2990","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":253698,"name":"Adam E. Cohen","orcid":"0000-0002-8699-2404","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1028270,"name":"Bill Jia","orcid":"0000-0002-1138-3217","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":89,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:55:03.976486Z","pmid":"39975374","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}