黑料吃瓜资源

Imagine yourself sometime in the far future aboard a routine rocket to Mars. Someone just spilled their drink. Without gravity, it collects in floating blobs that ripple right before your eyes. Now freeze.

What you see might look something like the above image from 黑料吃瓜资源鈥檚 (CSHL鈥檚) Cheadle lab. But those purple and green blobs aren鈥檛 the floating remains of somebody鈥檚 drink. They鈥檙e mysterious cells in the brain鈥檚 visual cortex called OPCs.

The visual cortex processes everything we see. Incoming visual information is relayed to this outer layer of the brain via synapses鈥攖he silver streaks above. When the brain鈥檚 neural circuits are first wired up, more connections, or synapses, are created than needed. As the brain accumulates new experiences and information, OPCs shape neural circuitry by pruning unnecessary synapses.

鈥淥PCs are doing all sorts of things in the brain that help it to function in a normal, healthy way,鈥� CSHL Assistant Professor Lucas Cheadle says. OPCs are a specialty of the Cheadle lab. He and his team discovered OPCs鈥� function as neural landscapers in 2022. Before that, they were thought only to produce oligodendrocytes, cells that sheath and support neurons. Now, Cheadle has developed new ways to zoom in and see OPCs in action.

鈥淲e鈥檙e able to see what thousands of OPCs, and even smaller groups of 30-50, are doing,鈥� he explains. 鈥淔rom there, we can figure out which synapses are fully engulfed by an OPC, which are in the process of being pruned, and which have maybe just been checked on by an OPC but not processed.鈥�

The used to produce the image above have become essential tools in Cheadle鈥檚 ongoing work. He and his team are now building on their 2022 discovery to help paint a complete picture of OPCs鈥� role in health and disease. Cheadle explains: 鈥淭丑别se mysterious cells are one of the primary sources of glioma,鈥� a deadly brain cancer. 鈥淭丑别y鈥檙e potentially involved in Alzheimer鈥檚 disease as well.鈥�

It鈥檒l take more research to illustrate these connections in detail. In the meantime, Cheadle is eager to share his lab鈥檚 new tools with researchers around the world. 鈥淭丑别 brain is constantly changing, and the same approaches you鈥檇 use to look at one type of cell can’t just be applied across the board,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e adapting and innovating to keep up with it鈥攖o better understand how the brain works.鈥�

Written by: Nick Wurm, Communications Specialist | [email protected] | 516-367-5940

鈥淭丑别 Flow Cytometry Shared Resource offers researchers equipment, training, and assistance with cellular analysis for a variety of applications as well as cell sorting. Our staff oversees equipment maintenance and quality control, trains new users on instrument operation, and assists with assay development and data analysis. We also provide tissue culture facilities for sample preparation and cell maintenance during ongoing flow cytometry experiments.鈥� 鈥� Director Pamela Moody

鈥淭丑别 Microscopy Core Facility provides training, consultation, experimental design and technical assistance to investigators at CSHL in widefield, spinning disk laser scanning or point laser scanning confocal fluorescence microscopy, and super-resolution microscopy. In addition, the Microscopy Shared Resource provides customized state-of-the-art optical imaging and quantitative image analysis applications to support a wide range of scientific endeavors.鈥� 鈥� Director Erika Wee, Ph.D.