Retinal nerve fiber layer thickness in normal children measured with optical coherence tomography.

Purpose: To measure the peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness in normal children.

Design: Observational cross-sectional study.

Participants: Ninety-two eyes of 92 normal children ages 4 to 17 years presenting to the Ophthalmology Clinic at the Harkness Eye Institute, Department of Ophthalmology, Columbia University.

Activity-dependent trafficking and dynamic localization of zipcode binding protein 1 and beta-actin mRNA in dendrites and spines of hippocampal neurons.

RNA binding proteins may be important mediators of the activity-dependent transport of mRNAs to dendritic spines of activated synapses. We used fluorescence microscopy and digital imaging techniques applied to both fixed and live cultured hippocampal neurons to visualize the localization of the mRNA binding protein, zipcode binding protein 1 (ZBP1), and its dynamic movements in response to KCl-induced depolarization at high spatial and temporal resolution. With the use of immunofluorescence, image deconvolution, and three-dimensional reconstruction, ZBP1 was localized in the form of granules that were distributed in dendrites, spines, and subsynaptic sites.

Real-time visualization of ZBP1 association with beta-actin mRNA during transcription and localization.

Background: mRNA localization in somatic cells is an important mechanism for gene expression regulation. In fibroblasts, the protein ZBP1 associates with the sequence that localizes beta-actin mRNA to the leading edge of fibroblasts, augmenting motility. beta-actin mRNA localizes in a cytoskeleton-dependent manner, depending on intact actin and myosin ATP-hydrolysis, and is largely bound to the actin cytoskeleton.

Single cell behavior in metastatic primary mammary tumors correlated with gene expression patterns revealed by molecular profiling.

We have developed animal models of breast cancer that allow the direct examination of the behavior of individual green fluorescent protein-expressing carcinoma cells in live nonmetastatic and metastatic primary tumors in situ. We have combined this model with multiphoton microscopy to image differences in cell behavior within the primary tumor. Differences in cell behavior between nonmetastatic and metastatic cells in culture and within live primary tumors were correlated with results from cDNA microarray analyses to identify potentially important genetic determinants for breast cancer invasion and metastasis.