cadherin
Students Contribute to Research Through Ovarian Art
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Seeing the development of an organ under a microscope for the first time can be a truly unforgettable experience. But for a class taught by Crystal Rogers at California State University, Northridge, it can also be an award-winning moment.
This image, prepared during a biology lab course, was one of the winners in the 2018 BioArt Scientific Image & Video Competition, sponsored by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). This colorful image shows the tip of an ovary from a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), provided by Mariano Loza-Coll. You can see that the ovary is packed with oocytes (DNA stained blue). The orderly connective structure (pink) and signal-transmitting molecules like STAT (yellow) are common to egg maturation and reproductive processes in humans.
What makes this image unique among this year’s BioArt winners is that the prep work was done by undergraduate students just learning how to work in a lab. They did the tissue dissections, molecular labeling, and beautiful stainings in preparation for Rogers to “snap” the photo on her research lab’s optical-sectioning microscope.
What’s also fantastic is that many of Rogers’s students are from groups traditionally underrepresented in biomedicine. Many are considering careers in research and, from the looks of things, they are off to a beautiful start.
After teaching classes, Rogers also has an NIH-supported lab to run. She and her team study salamanders and chickens to determine how biological “glue” proteins, called cadherins, help to create neural crest cells, a critical cell type that arises very early in development [1].
For developmental biologists, it’s essential to understand what prompts these neural crest cells to migrate to locations throughout the body, from the heart to the skin to the cranium, or head. For example, cranial neural crest cells at first produce what appears to be the same generic, undifferentiated facial template in vertebrate species. And yet, neural crest cells and the surrounding ectodermal cells go on to generate craniofacial structures as distinct as the beak of a toucan, the tusk of a boar, or the horn of a rhinoceros.
But if the organ of interest is an ovary, the fruit fly has long been a go-to organism to learn more. Not only does the fruit fly open a window into ovarian development and health issues like infertility, it showcases the extraordinary beauty of biology.
Reference:
[1] A catenin-dependent balance between N-cadherin and E-cadherin controls neuroectodermal cell fate choices. Rogers CD, Sorrells LK, Bronner ME. Mech Dev. 2018 Aug;152:44-56.
Links:
Rogers Lab (California State University, Northridge)
BioArt Scientific Image & Video Competition (Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Bethesda, MD)
NIH Support: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Snapshots of Life: Color Coding the Hippocampus
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Credit: Raunak Basu, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
The final frontier? Trekkies would probably say it’s space, but mapping the brain—the most complicated biological structure in the known universe—is turning out to be an amazing adventure in its own right. Not only are researchers getting better at charting the brain’s densely packed and varied cellular topography, they are starting to identify the molecules that neurons use to connect into the distinct information-processing circuits that allow all walks of life to think and experience the world.
This image shows distinct neural connections in a cross section of a mouse’s hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in the memory of facts and events. The large, crescent-shaped area in green is hippocampal zone CA1. Its highly specialized neurons, called place cells, serve as the brain’s GPS system to track location. It appears green because these neurons express cadherin-10. This protein serves as a kind of molecular glue that likely imparts specific functional properties to this region. [1]
Snapshots of Life: Visualizing Blood Vessels
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Credit: Christopher V. Carman and Roberta Martinelli, Harvard Medical School, Boston
This might look a bit like a fish net, but what’s actually caught in this image is the structure of the endothelium—the thin layer of cells lining your blood vessels that controls the flow of molecules in and out of the bloodstream. The red lines are the actin filaments that give each endothelial cell its shape, while the purple are proteins called cadherins.
Most of the time, the actin “ropes” and cadherin “glue” act together to form a tight seal between endothelial cells, ensuring that nothing leaks out of blood vessels into surrounding tissue. However, when endothelial cells sense an infection or an injury, the cadherins open gaps that allow various disease-fighting or healing factors or cells present in the blood to breach the barrier and enter infected or injured tissue. After the infection subsides or wound heals, the gaps close and the blood vessel is once again impenetrable.
