Laboratory of Cell Differentiation

Research

Hematopoietic cell development, signalling pathways, cytokines, small molecules, zebrafish, lamprey, chicken

The main interest of the laboratory is to study the molecular mechanism of cell fate determination. We use cytokines/growth factors and small molecules as tools to manipulate the fate of hematopoietic cells in model organisms (zebrafish, lamprey, chicken, mouse) and human primary cells to gain insight into the mechanisms underlying their self-renewal, proliferation and differentiation.

Primitive erythrocytes are the first blood cells generated during embryogenesis. They are thought to arise from lateral plate mesoderm, however tracking their emergence remains challenging and their origin is unclear. Thus, we aim to fate-map primitive erythrocytes from mesodermal derivatives in zebrafish using various molecular genetics, developmental biology and imaging techniques.

Embryos were fixed at segmentation 8 somites stage (11.5 hpf) or pharyngula stage (30 hpf), respectively and stained using gata1a (green), klf17 (red) and etv2 (magenta) by Hybridisation Chain Reaction probes (HCR, Molecular instruments). The nuclei were co-stained with DAPI (cyan). In figure 1, the gata1a and klf17 positive primitive erythroid progenitors that are differentiating from early mesoderm are located in a caudal region within the inner cell mass and will enter circulation (figure 2) later on. Migrating endothelial vein and arterial progenitors are visualized by etv2 probe (figure 1) and will give rise to blood vessels (figure 2). The klf17 positive structure at the anterior-ventral side of the yolk sac will develop into the hatching gland throughout subsequent development. Imaging was performed using Dragon fly (Andor) spinning disk.

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Dominik Filipp

Group leader