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How Do Cells Tell Time? Scientists Develop Single-Cell Imaging to Watch the Cell Clock

By Guest PostNovember 18, 2012Science24 hour, activity, biological noise, cell, cell division, circadian clock, cyclic gene, cyclic protein, cyclical behavior, embryonic segmentation, embryonic segments, emilie delaune, gene, gene activation, life, lifespan, mesoderm, mitosis, molecular clock, muscle, nathan shih, nervous system, notch signaling pathway, oscillating pattern, oscillation, paul françois, phase, protein, sharon amacher, signal, signal reception, single cell, somites, synchronization, tissue segments, vasculature, vertebrae, visualization, visualize, zebrafish embryos

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new way to visualize single-cell activity in living zebrafish embryos has allowed scientists to clarify how cells line up in the right place at the right time to receive signals about the next phase of their life.

Scientists developed the imaging tool in single living cells by fusing a protein defining the cells’ cyclical behavior to a yellow fluorescent protein that allows for visualization. Zebrafish embryos are already transparent, but with this closer microscopic look at the earliest stages of life, the researchers have answered two long-standing questions about how cells cooperate to form embryonic segments that later become muscle and vertebrae. (more…)

Yale Team Discovers How Stress and Depression Can Shrink the Brain

Major depression or chronic stress can cause the loss of brain volume, a condition that contributes to both emotional and cognitive impairment. Now a team of researchers led by Yale scientists has discovered one reason why this occurs — a single genetic switch that triggers loss of brain connections in humans and depression in animal models.

The findings, reported in the Aug. 12 issue of the journal Nature Medicine, show that the genetic switch known as a transcription factor represses the expression of several genes that are necessary for the formation of synaptic connections between brain cells, which in turn could contribute to loss of brain mass in the prefrontal cortex. (more…)

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How Do Cells Tell Time? Scientists Develop Single-Cell Imaging to Watch the Cell Clock

Yale Team Discovers How Stress and Depression Can Shrink the Brain