Speaker: WENG Zhe (Graduate Student, MBI, NUS)
Date: 8 December 2016, Thursday
Time: 11am
Venue: MBI, T-lab, level 5 seminar rooms

Supervisor(s): Prof Viasnoff Virgile

Abstract: Epithelia apical-basal polarisation is important for the formation of a selective barrier. The establishment of distinct “apical”, “lateral”, and “basal” functional domains is mainly studied at tissue or multiple cell level. It is difficult to decouple the chemical and physical parameters precisely in the conventional system. This thesis developed a novel micro-well based mini-organ approach to precisely control the 3-D micro-niches, and quantitatively assessed the localization of key polarity markers.

This thesis work has reported that at single cell level, epithelial apical-basal polarisation phenotype similar to “zonula adherens” could be induced by the 3-D biomimetic micro-niches. It reveals that lateral input of cell-cell adhesion cue is crucial for the formation of apically localized “zonula adherens” belt structure identified by an actin belt, together with PAR-3, N-WASP, ZO-1 and Claudin-3. The cell-matrix adhesion cue alone in 3-D micro-niches could not support the apically localized belt formation. 2-D input of cell-cell adhesion cues also induced an edge localized E-cadherin and actin belt. Taken together, this thesis demonstrates that cell-cell adhesion cues in 3-D and 2-D micro-niches are sufficient to develop “zonula adherens” like belt formation at single cell level, and creates a novel tool to quantitatively imaging and analysis of key polarity marker in 3-D micro-niches.

ALL EXCEPT PANEL ARE EXCUSED FOR CLOSE DOOR EXAMINATION