Neuroregeneration Lab - Eyleen Goh
The brain * neuroregeneration * neurodegeneration * stem cells
“The brain is a world consisting of a number of unexplored continents and great stretches of unknown territory.”
“As long as our brain is a mystery, the universe, the reflection of the structure of the brain will also be a mystery.”
Santiago Ramón y Cajal (Spanish Histologist Nobel Prize of medicine (1906), 1852-1934)
Neurogenesis plays a key role in brain development, and it also occurs throughout life in discrete regions of the adult mammalian brain. New neurons subsist in the adult brains of many different species, and are continuously generated and integrated into the existing circuitry. Little is known about the molecular mechanisms regulating the development and integration of adult-born neurons including differentiation, growth, migration, path-finding and synapse formation.
An understanding of the developmental processes of newly generated neurons in the developing and adult brains is not only important for deciphering the complexity of the brain, but also for paving the way for therapeutic measures and cell‑replacement therapy. Drugs/compounds or stem cells transplanted into the brain can then be effectively designed to treat diverse brain disorders.
Left Panel: Image featured in http://research.duke.edu/1100-words/23454
“Researchers at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore captured this image of astrocytes (star-shaped glial cells of the brain) that were developed from neural stem cells of mice in a lab dish. The nuclei of the cells are stained pink and the green dye is specific to a protein that marks them as astrocytes. Astrocytes are helpers and supporters of the brain's neurons and they perform repairs after a brain injury. Assistant Professor Eyleen Goh's lab at Duke-NUS is learning how human and mouse stem cells can become astrocytes on command with an eye toward possible therapies for many kinds of brain disorders in adults. (image: Guillaume Marcy)”
Image taken with Zeiss LSM710 confocal microscope.
Right Panel: Dorsal view of WT zebrafish head. Anterior end is to the right. Green labeled structure is axon tracts stained with acetylated tubulin. Red circular dots along the axon tracts of the spinal cord are RB neurons and clusters on both sides of the head behind the eyes are trigeminal ganglion neurons stained with islet antibody. Nuclear staining by DAPI is in cyan. Images taken with Zeiss Lightsheet microscope
Clockwise from left panel:
Figure 1 - Dentate granule cells.
Figure 2 - Head of a zebrafish [red: trigeminal ganglion cells, blue:DAPI labeling nuclei of all cells, green: green fluorescence protein (GFP) labeled cells].
Figure 3 - Dentate gyrus of mouse brain section (green: retroviral labeled cells, red: doublecortin (DCX) positive immature neurons, blue: DAPI labeling nuclei of all cells).
Figure 4 - Implanted cells in mouse brain (red: implanted neural progenitor cells, white: glial fibrillary associated proteins (GFAP) positive cells.
Images taken with Zeiss LSM 710 confocal microscope.
