Dendritic cells serve as transient intermediates during zebrafish Merkel cell development and regeneration.

Sensory cells often adopt specific morphologies that aid in the detection of external stimuli. Merkel cells encode gentle touch stimuli in vertebrate skin and adopt a reproducible shape characterized by spiky, actin-rich microvilli that emanate from the cell surface. The mechanism by which Merkel cells acquire this stereotyped morphology from basal keratinocyte progenitors is unknown.

Dermal appendage-dependent patterning of zebrafish Merkel cells.

Touch system function requires precise interactions between specialized skin cells and somatosensory axons, as exemplified by the vertebrate mechanosensory Merkel cell-neurite complex. Development and patterning of Merkel cells and associated neurites during skin organogenesis remain poorly understood, partly due to the in utero development of mammalian embryos. Here, we discover Merkel cells in the zebrafish epidermis and identify Atonal homolog 1a (Atoh1a) as a marker of zebrafish Merkel cells.

Thermoresponsive Copolymer Nanovectors Improve the Bioavailability of Retrograde Inhibitors in the Treatment of Infections.

Clinical manifestations of leishmaniasis range from self-healing, cutaneous lesions to fatal infections of the viscera. With no preventative vaccine available, the frontline option against leishmaniasis is chemotherapy. Unfortunately, currently available anti- drugs face several obstacles, including toxicity that limits dosing and emergent drug resistant strains in endemic regions.

formin FOR1 and profilin PRF1 are optimized for acute rapid actin filament assembly.

The regulated assembly of multiple filamentous actin (F-actin) networks from an actin monomer pool is important for a variety of cellular processes. is a unicellular green alga expressing a conventional and divergent actin that is an emerging system for investigating the complex regulation of actin polymerization. One actin network that contains exclusively conventional F-actin in is the fertilization tubule, a mating structure at the apical cell surface in gametes.

The elusive actin cytoskeleton of a green alga expressing both conventional and divergent actins.

The green alga is a leading model system to study photosynthesis, cilia, and the generation of biological products. The cytoskeleton plays important roles in all of these cellular processes, but to date, the filamentous actin network within has remained elusive. By optimizing labeling conditions, we can now visualize distinct linear actin filaments at the posterior of the nucleus in both live and fixed vegetative cells.

Visualizing Filamentous Actin Using Phalloidin in .

This protocol aims to visualize the filamentous actin network in . We improved fixed-cell labeling conditions using the F-actin probe, phalloidin. We created a -optimized protocol by halving the phalloidin incubation time, electing for optimal fixation conditions, and selecting for a healthy cell population.

Tigray Orthohantavirus Infects Two Related Rodent Species Adapted to Different Elevations in Ethiopia.

Orthohantaviruses are RNA viruses that some members are known to cause severe zoonotic diseases in humans. Orthohantaviruses are hosted by rodents, soricomorphs (shrews and moles), and bats. Only two orthohantaviruses associated with murid rodents are known in Africa, Sangassou orthohantavirus (SANGV) in two species of African wood mice (), and Tigray orthohantavirus (TIGV) in the Ethiopian white-footed rat ().

Structurally optimized analogs of the retrograde trafficking inhibitor Retro-2cycl limit Leishmania infections.

In infected mammalian cells, Leishmania parasites reside within specialized compartments called parasitophorous vacuoles (LPVs). We have previously shown that Retro-2, a member of a novel class of small retrograde pathway inhibitors caused reduced LPV sizes and lower parasite numbers during experimental L. mexicana sp.