Kleida Doci, “The Impact of Mechanosensory Proteins in Brain Morphogenesis”
Mentor: Jennifer Gutzman, Biological Sciences
Poster #50

Brain morphogenesis is the study of how the brain tissue acquires specific shape during early development. Structural birth defects that occur during brain morphogenesis can lead to physical or mental impairments of varying degrees, ranging from minor neurological effects to significant disability or early fatality. In our studies, we are analyzing how mechanosensory proteins impact the transduction of biomechanical forces during brain morphogenesis to shape the tissue. We use the formation of the highly conserved zebrafish midbrain-hindbrain boundary (MHB) tissue fold as a model to understand tissue stress and force generation during development. We hypothesize that mechanosensory proteins such as vinculin and talin play a role in mechanotransduction and contribute to the regulation of forces to properly shape the MHB. Utilizing a microinjection technique and confocal live imaging, we overexpress a vinculin protein tagged with green fluorescent protein (GFP) to visualize vinculin localization. This provides a tool to determine stress levels in a region-specific manner. We are also studying MHB development using zebrafish with a mutation in the talin 1 (tln1) gene. Using these mutants, we can determine if the tln1 gene plays a role in MHB morphogenesis. We cross the adult mutant carriers of the tln1 gene, then we inject the progeny with a membrane-GFP construct to label all cell membranes green. We then utilize confocal live imaging and measure the angle of the MHB in the mutants to compare them to wild-type embryos. These experiments aim to investigate the relationship between vinculin localization and talin and uncover the impact that mechanosensory proteins play in brain morphogenesis.