Elizabeth’s BioBlog

After a semester of overcoming obstacles and setbacks I have learned that scientific research is unpredictable. During the past months, I have been reading scientific literature, taking care of our Drosophila cultures, searching for necessary antibodies, and immunostaining mutant embryos. While revising articles I found information on antibodies aganinst cell adhesion molecules such as Fas II, Fas III, N-cadherin, connectin, capricious, DSCAM. These cell adhesions molecules are important factors in neuromuscular synaptogensis because they mediate processes such as axon path-finding and synaptic targeting. We have found that these antibodies are necessary for our project because by localizing them and describing their behavior during the synapse formation we might have a better understanding of their individual roles in neuromuscular synaptogenesis.

The immunostaining of Drosophila embryos with anti-myosin solution gave unexpected results. Although we were unable to distinguish the presensce of myosin in the muscles we found that the embryos’ tracheas were clearly immunostained. The trachea, which was still in formation, showed filopodial extensions in search for the adjacent cell that will close the tubular structure. Here I include some images of the immunostained Drosophila trachea that include the filopodial extensions. You might notice that in these pictures, the trachea looks like a swan inside the embryo

 

Anti-myosin staining, M12 embryo, trachea

Snapshot, trachea 3DEmbryo trachea 3D

Regarding our laboratory, we are now completely set up and stocked and ready to begin a period of continous experimentation. The Drosophila population is mite-free and thriving. We still have some problems with fungal contamination in some vials but we are mantaining that under control.