Long-term live imaging of the Drosophila adult midgut reveals real-time dynamics of division, differentiation, and loss
- Stanford University School of Medicine, United States
Abstract
Organ renewal is governed by the dynamics of cell division, differentiation, and loss. To study these dynamics in real time, we present a platform for extended live imaging of the adult Drosophila midgut, a premier genetic model for stem cell-based organs. A window cut into a living animal allows the midgut to be imaged while intact and physiologically functioning. This approach prolongs imaging sessions to 12-16 hours and yields movies that document cell and tissue dynamics at vivid spatiotemporal resolution. Applying a pipeline for movie processing and analysis, we uncover new, intriguing cell behaviors: that mitotic stem cells dynamically re-orient, that daughter cells use slow kinetics of Notch activation to reach a fate-specifying threshold, and that enterocytes extrude via ratcheted constriction of a junctional ring. By enabling real-time study of midgut phenomena that were previously inaccessible, our platform opens a new realm for dynamic understanding of adult organ renewal.
Data availability
All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data files for figures have also been uploaded to Dryad (https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1v1g1b0).
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Data from: Long-term live imaging of the Drosophila adult midgut reveals real-time dynamics of division, differentiation, and lossDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.1v1g1b0.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institutes of Health (R01GM116000-01A1)
- Judy Lisette Martin
- Erin Nicole Sanders
- Paola Moreno-Roman
- Leslie Ann Jaramillo Koyama
- Shruthi Balachandra
- XinXin Du
- Lucy Erin O'Brien
National Institutes of Health (1F31GM123736-01)
- Leslie Ann Jaramillo Koyama
National Institutes of Health (Stanford Discovery Fund Innovation Program)
- Lucy Erin O'Brien
Stanford University (Center for Biomedical Imaging at Stanford Seed Grant)
- Judy Lisette Martin
- Lucy Erin O'Brien
National Science Foundation (GRFP DGE-1656518)
- Erin Nicole Sanders
National Institutes of Health (2T32GM00779038)
- Erin Nicole Sanders
- Leslie Ann Jaramillo Koyama
William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation (Stanford Bio X Bowes Graduate Fellowship)
- Paola Moreno-Roman
Stanford University (Stanford DARE (Diversifying Academia Recruiting Excellence) Fellowship)
- Paola Moreno-Roman
National Institutes of Health (NRSA 1F32GM115065)
- XinXin Du
Stanford University (Stanford Dean's Postdoctoral Fellowship)
- XinXin Du
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2018, Martin et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Long-term live imaging of the Drosophila adult midgut reveals real-time dynamics of division, differentiation, and loss
eLife 7:e36248.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.36248
