细胞技术

The plasma membrane of the living cell is designed to regulate the internal composition of the cytosol and protect the interior of the cell from oxidative and enzymatic damage. It performs its role so well in these respects that it presents a major obstacle to the study of intracellular processes. Re ...

Interactions among proteins are fundamental to biological processes. In recent years, molecular biological tools have made it possible to study not only interactions among native proteins, but also among recombinant proteins and protein domains. Such studies often yield conside ...

In this chapter, we outline methods to modify targeted genes in Tetrahymena. Such a strategy could be utilized to deduce the function of individual dynein isoforms, as well as to dissect the functional domains within a single heavy chain.

A central issue in neuroscience is to understand the mechanisms underlining the stereotyped patterns of neuronal connectivity. Studies of neuronal development in both vertebrates and invertebrates have established two distinct processes involved in neuronal patterning, r ...

Deciphering the contribution of individual genes and in turn pathways to cellular processes can be �complicated and is often based on prior knowledge or assumptions of gene function. Phenotype-driven mutagenesis screens based around n-ethyl-n-nitrosurea (ENU) have been success ...

Nitric oxide (NO) is enzymatically produced from l-arginine and has a variety of biological functions. Autoxidation of NO in aqueous media yields nitrite (O = N–O−). NO and nitrite are oxidized in erythrocytes by oxyhemoglobin to nitrate (NO 3 − ). Nitrate reductases from bacteria reduce nitrate to ...

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) consist of Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) affecting about 0.1% of the western population. These two chronic gut diseases affect youth at their prime of life causing diarrhoea, intestinal bleeding, and severe gut discomfort. Mouse models ...

The serine protease granzyme B (GrB) is a key effector molecule in cell-mediated immunity, released by cytotoxic lymphocytes (CLs) to induce cell death in neoplastic or virus-infected cells. The ability to detect and measure GrB activity is important for understanding CLs. Unfortunate ...

Investigation of Granzyme B (GrB) function and pathophysiology in both human settings and rodent models increasingly involve the use of indirect immunofluorescence imaging and fluorescence-activated cell sorting, which requires reliable GrB antibodies that do not recogni ...

Accurate measurement of cytokine concentrations is a powerful and essential approach to the study of inflammation. The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is a simple, low-cost analytical tool that provides both the specificity and sensitivity required for the study of cyto ...

Cell death is of utmost importance in immunity, in part as a way to control the development and activity of leukocytes, but also as a strategy employed by leukocytes to rid the body of unwanted cells. Apoptosis is the classic type of programmed cell death involving an ordered sequence of cellular events, ...

Identification of the precise location, where hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) reside in the bone marrow, has made a great leap forward with the advance of live time-lapse video 2-photon fluorescent microscopy. These studies have shown that HSCs preferentially resides in the endosteal re ...

The hematopoietic system is highly proliferative in the bone marrow (BM) due to the short half-life of granulocytes and platelets in the blood. Analysis of cell cycling and cell proliferation in vivo in specific populations of the mouse BM has highlighted some key properties of adult hematopo ...

Lipid bodies, also known as lipid droplets, are present in most eukaryotic cells. In leukocytes, lipid bodies are functionally active organelles with central roles in inflammation and are considered structural markers of inflammatory cells in a range of diseases. The identification of ...

Glycol methacrylate (GMA), a water and ethanol miscible plastic resin, is a medium handy to use for light microscopy embedding that has a number of advantages than paraffin embedding. The GMA improves the histological, morphometrical, and immunohistochemical evaluations, mainly due ...

It is possible to obtain histological preparation of teeth and periodontium with satisfactory levels of quality by means of routine histological techniques, since specific cares are implemented during the sample processing. The formation of access ducts for the quick penetration of ...

Image cytometry (ICM) associates microscopy, digital image and software technologies, and has been particularly useful in spatial and densitometric cytological analyses, such as DNA ploidy and DNA content measurements. Basically, ICM integrates methodologies of optical mic ...

It is often necessary to process large plant samples for light microscopy studies, but due to structural characteristics of plant tissues, especially intercellular spaces, large vacuoles, and phenolic substances, results are often unsatisfactory. When large samples are embedded ...

During acute infection with the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, the causal agent of Chagas’ disease, tissue damage is related to intense tissue parasitism. Here we discuss histological approaches for an optimal visualization and quantification of T. cruzi nests in the heart, the main target o ...

The intravital microscopy is a valuable tool to capture images of cells in living organisms and to make studies of molecular determinants of leukocyte trafficking easier. Using this technique, we can directly visualize and measure each step of the leukocyte recruitment paradigm, inclu ...