Tyler Huycke, a developmental biologist at the University of Michigan, is among 15 scientists nationwide to be recognized by the Searle Scholars Program for innovative research across chemistry and the biomedical sciences.
Launched in 1981, the program supports early-career faculty from U.S. universities and research centers who are engaged in “high risk, high reward research,” which may then spur next-generation technologies that reveal biological function.
Huycke will receive $450,000 in flexible funding over the next three years to support his research, which explores the development of organs at the cellular level to better understand and combat diseases that cause the process to break down.
“It’s a really exciting and meaningful award to receive as a new investigator,” said Huycke, assistant professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology in LSA.
“Foundation awards like the Searle Scholars Program are really critical for junior faculty because they help bridge funding and empower research that follows the science, which, in my opinion, is how the best quality research gets done. It also helps in this transition state, when I’m building my own lab, testing out new directions, and establishing myself in my field.”
In addition to the Searle Scholar Award, Huycke recently won the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, a $5,000 grant from the Oak Ridge Associated Universities. That award, which will be matched by U-M, will serve as seed money for Huycke as he continues to establish his lab at the university.
The Huycke Lab studies the mechanical and chemical interactions between cells that constitute the building blocks of 3D organ structures. This process, which biologists call morphogenesis, traces how undifferentiated cells organize themselves, fold atop one another, and ultimately sculpt distinct organs, like hearts, intestines, and kidneys.
“I like to think of morphogenesis as how our organs get to be the right shapes and sizes,” Huycke said. “Each organ looks remarkably similar from one person to the next, and there’s a lot of regulation that goes into that, but there’s no initial blueprint for the cells that are building these organs to read.”
To understand how that process works on a cellular level, Huycke’s lab deploys cutting-edge microscopy to observe the development of mammalian tissue outside of the body at a resolution impossible just a few years ago. When studying live tissue, biologists often need to see the sample through a microscope, but using high-powered lasers to illuminate the tissue can actually degrade the sample, destroying what researchers are trying to study.
“As an undergraduate, I was using the same basic technology, but it was clunky. Today, we can look more deeply into the tissue and observe more of what’s happening from the whole tissue scale, all the way down to the subcellular scale,” Huycke said. “We can capture more information with less laser inputs so our tissues and cells are alive and actually captured at a higher resolution.”
Once scientists have a better understanding of what molecular and mechanical forces drive organ morphogenesis, Huycke said modern medicine may improve their treatments for when that process breaks down.
“Most diseases, at some point during their progression, are characterized by a loss of tissue structure,” Huycke said. “For example, in cancers, tissues often lose their normal architecture, causing cells to be exposed to new signals or environments that can cause them to divide or migrate uncontrollably. But what if we could program the cells to lock that tissue architecture into a more benign or stabilized state?”
With the award from the Searle Scholars Program, Huycke plans to enhance and expand his lab by recruiting graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, and purchasing equipment designed to support and advance research discoveries and innovations.
“We will immediately use the funds to profile biophysical ‘landscapes’ in the developing gut: spatial maps that connect gene expression, cell organization, tissue mechanics, and organ geometry,” Huycke said. “Specifically, we will combine single-cell spatial transcriptomics, physical nanoindentation, and live cell imaging to identify molecular-genetic programs linked to active cell mechanics and local tissue material properties.”
“The greatest challenges impacting our society cannot be solved through one-dimensional thinking — they require brilliant minds and bold new approaches,” said LSA Dean Rosario Ceballo, professor of psychology, and of women’s and gender studies. “As one of the world’s preeminent liberal arts and sciences colleges, LSA has a unique responsibility to bolster high risk, high reward research that benefits the public good.
“Early-career scientists like Tyler Huycke will play a vital role in shaping the future of our research enterprise, and I am delighted to see his work being recognized on the national stage.”
