Biophysical reviews’ “Meet the Councillor Series”: a brief profile of David J. Crossman

Abstract

I am the New Zealand representative on the IUPAB council. I have research interest in the biophysics of calcium release in the cardiac myocyte and use advance fluorescence microscopy, particularly super-resolution methods to characterise the subcellular remodelling that occurs in the failing heart. However, my career started in the marine biology field, which highlights the circuitous pathways that science can take. In the new council, I am responsible for Social Networks and Scientific Dissemination and look forward to increasing engagement across the diversity that is biophysics.

I am a Heart Foundation of New Zealand Senior Research Fellow and principal investigator of the Cardiac Nanobiology Group in the Department of Physiology, the University of Auckland. My research focuses on understanding the remodelling of the cardiac myocytes in the development of heart failure and how these changes can disrupt calcium induced calcium release that controls contraction. My career started in a different field, and I believe it is important for an aspiring scientist to be open to varied career paths as opportunities arise. I gained a BSc(Hons) in Biochemistry from the University of Otago and started my research in a structural biology lab investigating the structure and function of cold adapted proteins from Antarctic fish. I subsequently moved to the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland where I gained a PhD in Biological Sciences. My PhD investigated the nutritional physiology of nominally herbivorous coral reef fishes. I used high-performance liquid chromatography to measure the dietary amino acids in gut content of parrot and surgeon fishes that are abundant on coral reefs. I was able to identify that there were two main distinct nutritional profiles within these fishes: those that consumed low protein, low lipid, and high carbohydrate, the herbivores, and those that consumed a high protein, high lipid, and low carbohydrate, the detritivores, even though from field observations these fish feed in similar habitat (Crossman et al. 2005). Although this work was predominately a lab-based project, I was fortunate to visit the Great Barrier Reef and Lizard Island in Australia for sample collection. A highlight was scuba diving on the outer barrier reef and having a black marlin swim past me.

After PhD studies, I then worked for few years for a biopharmaceutical start-up investigating therapies for diabetic cardiomyopathy. Through these investigations, I was able to demonstrate using confocal microscopy the reversal of disrupted actin structure of the diabetic cardiomyocyte using copper chelation therapy (Cooper et al. 2004). I then moved to the Department of Physiology at the University of Auckland to investigate the structure and function of the failing human heart. During this period of research, I published one of the first detail analysis of the transverse (t) tubules and associated excitation contraction coupling proteins in the failing human heart. We were able to demonstrate extensive but highly variable remodelling of the t-tubules in human dilated cardiomyopathy (Crossman et al. 2011). In a subsequent study, we used tagged cardiac MRI to characterise the regional variability in fraction shortening within the dilated failing heart in patients on the transplant waiting list. When these patients received their new heart, we were able to obtain samples from their diseased explanted heart. We were able to demonstrate that the extent of t-tubule remodelling or loss of t-tubules was strongly correlated to the regional contractile performance (Crossman et al. 2015). In our current research, we have been using super-resolution microscopy (dSTORM) to reveal hidden nanoscale features in cardiac myocyte remodelling in the failing heart. For example, we have been able to document that the enlarged t-tubules in human dilated cardiomyopathy contain increased amounts of collagen leading us to hypothesise that the well-known fibrotic processes in heart failure may contribute to t-tubule remodelling (Crossman et al. 2017). Most recently, we have used super-resolution microscopy to document a loss of the calcium release channel, the ryanodine receptor, in cell regions near t-tubules in the failing human heart (Hou et al. 2021).

At this year’s 20th IUPAB Congress, 45th Annual SBBf Meeting, and 50th Annual SBBq Meeting, I was involved in organising the “Women In Science” symposium along with Maria Cristina Nonato (University of São Paulo). Please refer to article on this symposium in the current issue. In the upcoming issues of Biophysical Reviews, we plan to chronicle the career paths of established and upcoming women scientists to highlight career pathways for women. In the new IUPAB council, I have the role of facilitating Social Networks and Scientific Dissemination. I look forward to increasing scientific outreach and engagement of IUPAB with the biophysics community. I would welcome ideas for engagement particularly from early career researchers with interest in this area.

Declarations

Conflict of interest

The author declares no competing interests.