Dr. Qnarik V. Kazaryan

Head of Laboratory
Doctor of biological sciences, PhD

E-mail: knarik@neuroscience.am, kghazaryan@yandex.ru

K.V. Kazaryan defended her doctoral thesis in 1991 and earned the degree of Doctor of biological sciences in Human and Animal Physiology. Title of Dissertation: "Regulatory mechanisms of spontaneous activity of ureteral smooth muscle cells." She is the author of 120 scientific papers.

Research in the laboratory focuses on the study of pacemaker rhythmogenesis formation and regulation mechanisms as the main factors of the smooth muscle activity.

General characteristics of the spontaneous electrical activity of the ureteral and uterine smooth muscles have been studied.

The presence of new autonomous rhythmogenic zones along with the well-known, ureteral perirenal area was revealed. Depolarization signals may trigger a pacemaker activity in the initially inactive areas of the organ. Despite the rat ureteral peribladder area is characterized by a relatively low-frequency of spontaneous activity compared to the main perirenal pacemaker, polymodality of this area was revealed and the latter may provide a functional role of the organ under the certain conditions. In norm, pacemakers of the above mentioned area can both serve as a backup mechanism to force the urine and participate in the generation of background electrical activity of the bladder.

The study of spontaneous electrical activity of the myometrial smooth muscle tissue has also been performed in the laboratory. The autonomy of rhythmogenesis in myometrial different areas was shown by analyzing the electrophysiological properties of the rythmogenic areas in the uterus and uterine horns. It is also shown, that the ovarian horn area has completely different parameters of spontaneous activity in comparison with the downstream rhythmogenic areas of the myometrium that suggests the leading role of this area in coordination of all the active areas in the myometrium.

The influence of each rhythmogenic loci on the spontaneous activity of the remaining regions was also investigated. Changes in electrophysiological properties of the investigated areas were analyzed under the conditions blocking the influence of others. It is shown, that ovarian horn area may have a controlling role in the interaction of asynchronous pacemaker activities of the rhythmogenic areas in myometrium. At the same time, the greatest suppression of spike activity parameters was shown in the uterine corpus.

Complex electrophysiological and morphohistochemical studies of atypical cells providing spontaneous rhythmogenesis of smooth muscle tissue are also conducted.