Skill: microfabrication
-
Mechanisms of renal cyst formation studied with biomimetic kidney-on-chips
Genetic renal kidney diseases lead to the development of numerous cysts in the renal tubules, ultimately leading to kidney failure. Despite extensive work on the genetics and cell biology of these diseases, the precise mechanism of cyst formation, resulting from localized dilatation of the renal tubules, remains imperfectly understood. Renal tubules have an extremely controlled…
-
Tracking of cancer cell-matrix interactions in a fully controllable 3D fiber system
The mechanical, geometrical and chemical properties of the 3D fibrous extracellular matrix play a key role in cancer initiation and progression, by controlling the movement and fate of tumor cells as well as surrounding fibroblasts, immune or endothelial cells. A strong emphasis has been put recently on the development of matrices with controllable fiber properties…
-
High-throughput single-molecule FISH to calibrate in-vivo transcriptional kinetics of developmental timing genes in C. elegans
Spatiotemporal patterns of gene expression are fundamental to every developmental program. The resulting gene expression domains are traditionally characterized by their levels of gene products. However, in vivo transcriptional dynamics are known to be highly dynamic, often stochastically fluctuating between periods of quiescence and periods of pronounced transcriptionally activity. To fully understand how patterns of…
-
Uncovering molecular mechanisms of developmental tissue coordination with spatiotemporal temperature perturbations
Temperature impacts all biochemical reactions inside a cell. For developing multicellular organisms, temperature fluctuations pose challenges because morphogenetic events depend on both, spatially and temporally coordinated cellular decisions. Despite this, most multicellular systems show a surprising degree of robustness with respect to temperature changes within certain temperature limits. With climate change pushing organisms more and…