To assemble and sustain functional tissues, cells need to establish and maintain an asymmetric organization of their membrane and cellular contents, a phenomenon known as cell polarity. This fundamental feature of eukaryotic cells must be coordinated between cells, as well as regulated, to allow for tissue homeostasis and normal animal development.
Despite genetic identification of the proteins involved in cell polarity and a large body of knowledge about their interactions in vitro, it remains unclear how polarity proteins are organized into signaling complexes in cells. However, groundbreaking research by Associate Professor Dan Dickinson and colleagues in the Dickinson Lab at the University of Texas at Austin has advanced that understanding via an innovative approach to in vivo imaging that combines rapid cell lysis with total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF), using Mad City Labs RM21 Advanced Microscope, to assess protein complex remodeling in real time during embryonic development.
This research is discussed in detail in the article Decoding Asymmetric Cell Division via Single-Molecule Imaging.
Download article here.
More information on the RM21 available here.