Imaging
Develoment Biology aims to explain how a mature organism is formed through the description of successive steps of its construction. As such, it relies on the careful observation of the numerous events that underlie this program. Imaging at different scales of the living organism (molecular, cellular, tissular) through the most advanced microscopic methods therefore plays a central role in our discipline.
Observing cells or tissues in real time, rather than reconstituting events from independent samples, is essential to understand the dynamics of biological events. Therefore whenever possible, we try to use live imaging in most projects developed in the group. For instance, to characterize symmetric and asymmetric modes of divisions in neural progenitors, we document numerous parameters of cells undergoing mitosis in the neuroepithelium, and follow the behavior of their daughter cells over the next 24 to 48 hours to determine their identity: this longitudinal approach, coupled to functional tests, is the best way to establish correlations and causal relationships between early and late events. We have also implemented a live RNAi screen on cultured human cells, looking for defects in the orientation of their axis of division, in order to identify new genes involved in this beautifully choreographed mechanism.
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These observations require long hours of image acquisition at the microscope, we have set-up a dedicated spinning-disk confocal microscope, which caters for the specific needs of most of our experiments.
This microscope was acquired through the kind help of Canceropôle Ile-de-France and generous contributions from the Rotary Clubs de France to the Fédération pour la Recherche sur le Cerveau.
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