2023 WINNERS
Grazing Incidence, Structured Illumination Microscopy demonstrates that networks of individual, fluorescent actin filaments condense and relax in cells undergoing pulsed contractions and expansions during dorsal closure
Pulsed cellular contractions and expansions occur on a 10s of second time scale occur midway through embryogenesis in Drosophila melanogaster – ultimately, they contribute to emergent properties that contribute to tissue morphogenesis on a tens of minutes (hours) time scale. The embryos were fluorescently labeled through the ubiquitous expression of GFP-fused to the actin binding domain of fly moesin. The time-lapsed sequence is sped up 30 times. The field of view of the movie is larger than the region of interest shown in Figure 1 of the publication that fully describes this work:
Regan P. Moore, Stephanie M. Fogerson, U. Serdar Tulu, Jason W. Yu, Amanda H. Cox, Melissa A. Sican, Dong Li, Wesley R. Legant, Aubrey V. Weigel, Janice M. Crawford, Eric Betzig, and Daniel P. Kiehart.– Stills from the movie are shown in Figure 1 and at high magnification in Figures 2 and 4 of the paper.
Video Credit: Regan Moore, U. Serdu Tulu, Dong Li
Moore RP, Fogerson SM, Tulu US, Yu JW, Cox AH, Sican MA, Li D, Legant WR, Weigel AV, Crawford JM, Betzig E, Kiehart DP.
Superresolution microscopy reveals actomyosin dynamics in medioapical arrays.
Mol Biol Cell. 2022 Sep 15;33(11):ar94.
Arborizations of Trpγ+ neurons, a developmental neuronal population that coordinates brain-wide activity
Patterned, stimulus-independent neural activity (PSINA) propagates throughout the brain during Drosophila pupal development. Approximately 2000 neurons express the cation channel transient receptor potential gamma (Trpγ). These neurons arborize throughout the brain where they relay and pattern PSINA. The panel above shows coverage of the brain 72 hours after pupal formation by Trpγ+ neurons expressing myr::SM-FLAG. Most Trpγ+ neurons are labeled; some sparseness was introduced using FLP-Out to improve staining. The panel below highlights a single Trpγ+ neuron (orange, manually segmented) in the context of others (cyan) labeled using Sparse Predictive Activity through Recombinase Competition (SPARC). Both images are maximum intensity projections of a confocal stack.
Image Credit: Bryce Bajar and Orkun Akin
Bajar BT, Phi NT, Isaacman-Beck J, Reichl J, Randhawa H, Akin O.
A discrete neuronal population coordinates brain-wide developmental activity.
Nature. 2022 Feb; 602(7898), 639-646.