Related papers: Visualizing septins in early Drosophila embryos
Septins are guanine nucleotide-binding proteins that are conserved from fungi to humans. Septins assemble into heterooligomeric complexes and higher-order structures with key roles in various cellular functions including cell migration and…
Complex spatial and temporal patterns of gene expression underlie embryo differentiation, yet methods do not yet exist for the efficient genome-wide determination of spatial expression patterns during development. In situ imaging of…
Tissue boundaries pattern embryos, suppress tumours, and provide directional cues. Tissue boundaries are associated with supracellular cables formed by actin and the molecular motor non-muscle myosin II. Actomyosin cables generate tension…
Behavioural phenotyping of Drosophila is an important means in biological and medical research to identify genetic, pathologic or psychologic impact on animal behaviour.
Current in vivo microscopy allows us detailed spatiotemporal imaging (3D+t) of complete organisms and offers insights into their development on the cellular level. Even though the imaging speed and quality is steadily improving,…
Precise temporal coordination of gene expression is crucial for many developmental processes. One central question in developmental biology is how such coordinated expression patterns are robustly controlled. During embryonic development of…
Separating synapses into different classes based on their appearance in EM images has many applications in biology. Examples may include assigning a neurotransmitter to a particular class, or separating synapses whose strength can be…
The early fly embryo offers a relatively pure version of the problem of spatial scaling in biological pattern formation. Within three hours, a "blueprint" for the final segmented body plan of the animal is visible in striped patterns of…
Drosophila melanogaster, a small dipteran of African origin, represents one of the best-studied model organisms. Early work in this system has uniquely shed light on the basic principles of genetics and resulted in a versatile collection of…
Gene expression of social actions in Drosophilae has been attracting wide interest from biologists, medical scientists and psychologists. Gene-edited Drosophilae have been used as a test platform for experimental investigation. For example,…
Axes of polarity (and primary morphogenetic gradients) are established in the oocyte - early embryo through active transport and localization of maternal factors. It is the oocyte - syncytial embryo of Drosophila (D. melanogaster) that is a…
Polarization of the mammalian embryo at the right developmental time is critical for its development to term and would be valuable in assessing the potential of human embryos. However, tracking polarization requires invasive fluorescence…
While most processes in biology are highly deterministic, stochastic mechanisms are sometimes used to increase cellular diversity, such as in the specification of sensory receptors. In the human and Drosophila eye, photoreceptors sensitive…
The predetermination, formation and maintenance of the primary morphogenetic gradient (bicoid gradient) of the early Drosophila embryo involves many interrelated processes. Here we focus on a system-biological analysis of the processes of…
Organismal phenotypes emerge from a complex set of genotypic interactions. While technological advances in sequencing provide a quantitative description of an organism's genotype, characterization of an organism's physical phenotype lags…
The identification and validation of gene-gene interactions is a major challenge in human studies. Here, we explore an approach for studying epistasis in humans using a Drosophila melanogaster model of neonatal diabetes mellitus. Expression…
The first step to understanding brain function is to determine the brain's network structure. We report a three-dimensional analysis of the brain network of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster by synchrotron-radiation tomographic…
During embryogenesis tissue layers continuously rearrange and fold into specific shapes. Developmental biology identified patterns of gene expression and cytoskeletal regulation underlying local tissue dynamics, but how actions of multiple…
Life in complex systems, such as cities and organisms, comes to a standstill when global coordination of mass, energy, and information flows is disrupted. Global coordination is no less important in single cells, especially in large oocytes…
Within developing embryos, tissues flow and reorganize dramatically on timescales as short as minutes. This includes epithelial tissues, which often narrow and elongate in convergent extension movements due to anisotropies in external…