Cell scientists and bioimaging master collaborate to settle fourth measurement insider facts

Overview

• Post By : Kumar Jeetendra


• Source: University of Central Florida


• Date: 29 Oct,2020

Cell biologists at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and Bar-Ilan University in Israel and a bioimaging expert at the University of Central Florida are teaming up in what they expect may result in a major breakthrough in the understanding of the three-dimensional organization of the nucleus over their role in certain diseases.

The dream team was recently awarded a National Institutes of Health $4.2 million award. The five-year grant is part of the NIH’s 4D Nucleome Program (4DN). The program aims to spur the development of technology that will advance the understanding of how DNA is arranged inside cells in space and time and how this affects cellular functions in health and disease.

UCF optics and photonics Assistant Professor Kyu Young Han will create new multifunctional high-performance microscopes which UIUC’s Professor Andrew Belmont and other 4DN researchers will use to map genes and proteins and observe their dynamics in the fourth dimension.

Better understanding of what happens in these very small places will probably lead to answers for diseases that currently have no treatment and perhaps even cures to others. The challenge is current microscopes lack the type of power necessary to determine detail researchers need from the cell’s nucleus.

Han says the two new microscopes will allow Belmont to see proteins and chromosomes within the nucleus moving around in real-time, which will lead to a better knowledge of what’s going on in gene expression.

He also has some experience in producing new technology with biomedical applications. In 2018 he developed a highly likely swept tile (HIST) microscope, which is utilized for single-molecule imaging in a really large imaging area.

Belmont, from the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology, has been conducting pioneering work in the motion and organization of chromosomes inside the nucleus.

Belmont’s lab suspects there may be two compartments in the nucleus of a cell that are involved in increasing gene expression. One is the nuclear speckle periphery. There may be other places that are critical. To know for sure, they will need to be able to observe what is going on, which is why the microscope is so important.

Also on the team, is Yaron Shav-Tal, a researcher at Bar-Ilan University. He’ll lend his expertise in RNA motion and transport within cells. Together they intend to shed new light on nuclear dynamics and their effect on the biology of gene regulation.

Han is an assistant professor at the College of Optics and Photonics. This is Han’s second NIH grant in under 30 days.

His postdoctoral research, in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, focused on designing new optical instruments for biological applications, like analyzing DNA-protein interactions, RNA imaging in live-cells, and showing nuclear structure in mammalian cells.