April 2015

April 2015:  Cluster of radial glial-like neural progenitors (red) generating immature neurons (green) in a culture of the embryonic rat ventral midbrain.

Submitted by: Shane V. Hegarty Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience.

Dr Shane Hegarty is a BSc and PhD graduate from the Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience, UCC. He recently began an Irish Research Council Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship under the supervision of Dr Aideen Sullivan and Dr Gerard O’Keeffe in the Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience. Their research investigates the role of BMP-Smad signalling in ventral midbrain dopaminergic neuron development.

The differentiation of specific neuronal cell types from neural stem cells is a research area of major therapeutic interest, given the promising potential of such progeny to be utilised for cell replacement therapy, disease modelling and drug screening. The generation of ventral midbrain dopaminergic neurons from stem cells is of particular interest to the Parkinson’s disease field, due to the progressive loss of this neuronal population in this neurodegenerative disease.

The image depicts a cluster of vimentin-immunostained neural precursors (red), which have a radial glial-like morphology, in a culture of the embryonic ventral midbrain following one week of proliferation and two weeks of differentiation. Embryonic day 14 ventral midbrain neural stem cells were proliferated using mitogens, and subsequently differentiated using serum proteins. These neural precursors generate immature βIII-tubulin-immunostained neurons (green) during the second week of differentiation in vitro. Cellular nuclei were stained with bisbenzamide (blue). The image was taken using an inverted fluorescence microscope at 200x magnification.

This image was recently exhibited as part of the BRAINTALK Parkinson’s Community Meeting and Art Exhibition, held in the Glucksman Gallery University College Cork. This event was organised by Dr Shane Hegarty and Professor Aideen Sullivan of the Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience, UCC, as part of the BRAINTALK project (www.ucc.ie/en/braintalk).

The purpose of the meeting was to bring together People with Parkinson's, Parkinson's researchers and clinicians, to create an interconnected Parkinson's Community in Ireland. Over 200 participants, the majority of whom were People with Parkinson’s and their carers, gathered in the Glucksman Gallery for a variety of presentations by Parkinson’s advocacy groups, People with Parkinson’s, therapists, neurologists and neuroscientists.

 ‘Parkinson’s Community’ art exhibition was launched after the meeting. This included paintings made by People with Parkinson’s in an ‘Exploring Parkinson’s with Art’ workshop , as well as photomicrographs showing the ongoing scientific work by Parkinson’s researchers in the Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience, UCC.

For full details see BRAINTALK website  http://www.ucc.ie/en/braintalk/