Dr Melanie White - IMB : Quails across the scales: quantitative live imaging of neural tube formation
Speaker: Dr Melanie White
Title: Quails across the scales: quantitative live imaging of neural tube formation
Understanding how an initially homogenous population of cells organises into tissues and forms an embryo is a fundamental problem in developmental biology. Processes occurring across multiple scales must be precisely coordinated: from individual gene expression to the behaviour of single cells, to the forces driving the simultaneous movement of thousands of cells. Using quantitative live imaging technologies, we visualise and investigate how these dynamic mechanisms control tissue formation and cell fate in vivo. However, live analysis of post-implantation development is largely inaccessible in mouse embryos and other more accessible model organisms do not recapitulate important aspects of human morphogenesis.
We have recently set up a new transgenic quail model which enables both live imaging of embryogenesis and replicates key morphogenetic events of early human development. We have generated a variety of transgenic lines and are using the quail model system to understand the dynamic processes driving formation of the neural tube. By studying how mechanical forces are generated and transmitted at the cellular and tissue scales, we aim to reveal how the early nervous system forms in real time.
About Neuroscience Seminars
Neuroscience seminars at the QBI play a major role in the advancement of neuroscience in the Asia-Pacific region. The primary goal of these seminars is to promote excellence in neuroscience through the exchange of ideas, establishing new collaborations and augmenting partnerships already in place.
Seminars in the QBI Auditorium on Level 7 are held on Wednesdays at 12-1pm, which are sometimes simulcast on Zoom (with approval from the speaker). We also occassionally hold seminars from international speakers via Zoom. The days and times of these seminars will vary depending on the time zone of the speaker. Please see each seminar listed below for details.
