Identification of the biological significance of small chemicals for morphogenesis

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24370092
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Partial Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Developmental biology
• Research Institution: National Institute for Basic Biology
• Principal Investigator: UENO Naoto 基礎生物学研究所, 形態形成研究部門, 教授 (40221105)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): SUZUKI Makoto 基礎生物学研究所, 形態形成研究部門, 助教 (10533193)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): NAGAI Takeharu 大阪大学, 産業科学研究所, 教授 (20311350)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 胚葉形成 / 原腸形成

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We conducted a research to unveil the importance of small chemicals such as calcium and ATP for tissue remodeling and morphogenesis during development by employing live-imaging. We used Xenopus laevis as a model organism that allows to surgically manipulate embryos and fluorescent probes GECO and YC-Nano (FRET）for calcium and ATeam (FRET) for extracellular ATP. As results, we demonstrated that calcium spikes that oscillates are important for cellular morphogenesis such as a@ica constriction, whicle basal-level calcium is essential for cell migration. We also found that extracellular ATP that accumulates at the intercellular spaces (cell-cell boundary) is required for the propagation of calcium waves across tissues.

Free Research Field

発生生物学