Piezo1-Mediated Ca Activities Regulate Brain Vascular Pathfinding during Development.

During development, endothelial tip cells (ETCs) located at the leading edge of growing vascular plexus guide angiogenic sprouts to target vessels, and thus, ETC pathfinding is fundamental for vascular pattern formation in organs, including the brain. However, mechanisms of ETC pathfinding remain largely unknown. Here, we report that Piezo1-mediated Ca activities at primary branches of ETCs regulate branch dynamics to accomplish ETC pathfinding during zebrafish brain vascular development.

One-step generation of zebrafish carrying a conditional knockout-knockin visible switch via CRISPR/Cas9-mediated intron targeting.

The zebrafish has become a popular vertebrate animal model in biomedical research. However, it is still challenging to make conditional gene knockout (CKO) models in zebrafish due to the low efficiency of homologous recombination (HR). Here we report an efficient non-HR-based method for generating zebrafish carrying a CKO and knockin (KI) switch (zCKOIS) coupled with dual-color fluorescent reporters.

Neurons secrete miR-132-containing exosomes to regulate brain vascular integrity.

Vascular integrity helps maintain brain microenvironment homeostasis, which is critical for the normal development and function of the central nervous system. It is known that neural cells can regulate brain vascular integrity. However, due to the high complexity of neurovascular interactions involved, understanding of the neural regulation of brain vascular integrity is still rudimentary.