Life Juxtaposition
Camila Vazquez Echegaray, Postdoc | PEREIRA LAB
The story
Life is a constant change, where cells evolve with a raged need for more. And on the way they explore all the boundaries of shapes, colors, flavors and experiences. In the midst of this mess is when cells find meaning and sense, redefining their identity amid the juxtapositions that choices may present. After all, that’s life.
Research area
Cell reprogramming, haematopoiesis, immunity.
Impact
This image was captured during a project where we were trying to understand if a specific protein, GATA2, had a detrimental function during mitosis to ‘mark’ cells to become blood stem cells. We showed that blood is not generated when GATA2 is removed from mitotic DNA. This brings new insights into the mechanisms of cell identity establishment, for studying blood diseases and treatments.
Image description
The images come from capturing human cells in a time-lapse experiment. Fluorescence helps identify a nuclear protein and the chromatin. The resulting image comes from overlapping all the frames for a range of 12 hours. We can observe the tracks of the cells and how they are dividing, highlighting mitotic cells being present. During processing, a filter was applied to create the pseudo-color image.
Credits
Images acquisition by Rita Alves.