Figure 1. Bovine pulmonary artery endothelial cells visualized using microscopy and fluorescently labelled antibodies. Microtubules fluoresce green, microfilaments red, and nuclear DNA blue. Arrows indicate cell-cell interaction. Magnification: 200x. Photo credit: Paul Gajda, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Calgary.

Fluorescent Microscopy

Published: May 5, 2022

I recently completed my second year of university and found employment as an NSERC student research assistant in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine.

This week, I received training in fluorescent microscopy and had the opportunity to view bovine pulmonary artery endothelial cells stained with fluorescently labelled antibodies (Figure 1).

I was intrigued to learn how well this technique reveals subcellular structure and organization. The locations of microtubules, actin filaments, and nuclear DNA were readily apparent to me (Figure 1) and so too was the fact that actin filaments are involved in cell-cell interactions (Figure 1, arrows; Nagahara and Matsuda, 1996).

Literature Cited

Nagahara, S., & Matsuda, T. (1996). Cell-substrate and cell-cell interactions differently regulate cytoskeletal and extracellular matrix protein gene expression. Journal of Biomedical Materials Research, 32(4), 677-686. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4636(199612)32:4%3C677::AID-JBM22%3E3.0.CO;2-9?casa_token=SsQ0m96Y-WsAAAAA:47FoAoiWwrhlH2F08KUm0RJkuq53JDjluB6vQbe53VYVlplyaxPaAoHzBx-5ONhzU_H08OVRUy5LfgQ

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