Neuroscience
Quantifying the Cell Expression in Neurofibromatosis Type-1 Cultured Cerebral Organoids
Katey Jones
Neuroscience
Katey Jones
Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is a relatively common genetic disease that affects approximately one person out of every 3,000 people (4). This genetic disease can lead to ophthalmic conditions, tumor growth, memory deprivation, learning deficits, and several other life-threatening and uncomfortable symptoms. Neurodegenerative diseases, such as Neurofibromatosis Type-1, are in the process of being modeled in 3D stem cell modeling cultured systems, known as cerebral organoids. These organoids have the ability to simulate the development ecosystem of a developing brain and self-organize into brain regions (Kelava, 2016). These organoids, however, are not perfect and require further testing in order to improve their accuracy and usefulness. Difficulties can arise during the induction of neurodegenerative diseases, and the methodology in creating the organoids needs to be improved to reduce necrotic tissue formation and preserve cell expression as the organoids age. In order to evaluate the issues in these cerebral organoids, I conducted an experiment to quantify the cell expression of two sample cell lines, the BJ line, and the PGP1 line, and statistically analyzed my results. This research included freezing, sectioning, staining, and imaging the organoids so that I could perform analysis in the ImageJ software and analyze my cell counting data in excel. Based on the research performed, my data proved insignificant but majorly showed that both RFP positive cell expression and GFP positive cell expression decreased with age across both cell lines. This research should be replicated, in order to achieve statistical significance.