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Research summary
Research summary
A cell in a fruit fly tissue. The white/gray structures are made of filamentous actin, a dynamic polymer that helps the cell make different shapes and move. Cytonemes are the finger-like projections. Scale bar, 5 microns.
Living organisms display amazing ranges of organization - from proton gradients to the different functioning parts of whole organs. We are interested in how cells work with each other to develop tissue order and function. This is important for understanding how tissues develop and for understanding what happens when tissues stop working the way they should.
Biological patterning relies on the coordination of cell-cell communication events across large and small distances, and defects in patterning can lead to human disorders and disease. Cytonemes are one example of an active cell process that coordinates cell signaling for many patterning events during vertebrate and invertebrate development. The goal of this work is to understand both how cytonemes are regulated at the cellular scale and how they contribute to the overall progression of patterning.
Our research investigates the following questions:
What makes a cell able to build cytonemes?
How do cytonemes interact with each other during signaling?
What are different ways we can manipulate the formation and movement of cytonemes?
How do local interactions between small groups of cells affect the trajectory of tissue patterning as a whole?
How can mathematical models help guide us to discover new factors that help drive patterning in biological tissues?
Recent research articles
Recent research articles
Quantifying bristle cell organization in Drosophila melanogaster using spatial clustering features
Quantifying bristle cell organization in Drosophila melanogaster using spatial clustering features
Attipoe WK, Neighmond A, Waters O, De Silva SHD, Hunter GL, and Asante-Asamani EO. (2025) Link to Preprint
Summary: In this collaboration, we build a method for classifying wild type and RNAi-expressing tissues. We wanted to know if there are features of fly bristle patterns that are useful to classify images into these two categories that are not necessarily obvious. We found 4 features that helped us to be able to classify many of our knockdown conditions that we tested.
Myosin XV is a negative regulator of signaling filopodia during long-range
Myosin XV is a negative regulator of signaling filopodia during long-range
lateral inhibition
lateral inhibition
Clements R, Smith T, Cowart L, Zhumi J, Sherrod A, Cahill A, and Hunter GL. (2024) Developmental Biology
Summary: In this work we describe a new role for the fruit fly unconventional MyTH4-FERM myosin, Myosin XV, in the regulation of signaling filopodia (cytonemes) during bristle patterning. Loss of Myosin XV leads to longer and more numerous filopodia that are signaling deficient, due to decreased localization of Delta ligand along their length. This is important because Myosin XV is the second myosin associated with cytoneme activity, and the only one with this activity in Drosophila so far.
Acknowledgement
Acknowledgement
Our lab is generously supported by Howard University (Department of Biology, College of Arts and Sciences). Additional support comes from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Institute of General Medical Science (NIGMS): R35GM150782 to GH.
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