Breast cancer brain metastases don’t just invade the brain, they rewire it!
Our new review covers how metastatic breast cancer cells hijack neurotransmitters, synapses, astrocytes, and calcium signaling, to thrive in the brain. Possibly through #Cytonemes and #TNTs !
www.mdpi.com/3849806
Cells use proteins like morphogens to talk to each other in order to build and maintain 3D tissue structures. But how do these morphogens reach distant cells when they are all packed together? We think long #cytonemes play a big role in shaping how cells talk to one another for growth.
Confocal micrograph of a mouse embryonic fibroblast with membrane labeled in blue, nuclei in yellow and cellular cytoplasm in red.
Happy #FluorescenceFriday! Here is a mouse fibroblast with multiple thin membrane extensions reaching out toward its neighbors. The long (>10 um) extensions are a type of signaling filopodia called #cytonemes that transport signals like SHH, WNT, Notch, and GFs! 🔬 by Senior Scientist Hong Lin. 🧪 👩🔬
Woo hoo! 🎉 Shout out to @stjuderesearch.bsky.social postdoc Christina Daly for her featured image on FocalPlane! ✅ the link for more about her research interests! 🧪 🔬 🤩 👩🔬🙌 #Microscopy #DevBio #Neurodevelopment #Cytonemes
For #FluorescenceFriday 🔬 we have an endothelial cell 🔵 with #cytonemes carrying vesicles (bright cyan dots) to deposit signaling proteins on distant receiving cells. 🟣= actin
Image by Morgan Hiebert
Slik sculpts the plasma membrane into #cytonemes to control cell-cell communication
David Hipfner, @sebcarreno.bsky.social and colleagues
www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....
Happy #MicroscopyMonday! Here are some Sonic Hedgehog-expressing NIH3T3 cells (red) co-cultured with NIH3T3s expressing the SHH co-receptor BOC (green). Notice the long, stable #cytonemes forming between the two populations! 👀 So cool! 🧪
