Daily Archives: July 28, 2017

Little green aliens among us

14CoS ko, hepatocytes, rescue with NTBC, Electron micrographs of liver, Nuclear symmetry during apoptosis, Science and art cover illustrations, The cell: images, Ultimate order, the cell

So sorry, ha ha, but when i see this kind of nuclear symmetry (an electron micrograph, with two little presumptive eyeballs staring at me (condensed chromatin), zygomatic arches coming off (as condensed chromatin on the sides of the nucleus), and a hairline part at the center of the frontal bone (condensed chromatin and nuclear pores on the inner nuclear membrane at the top of the nucleus) and a pointy chin, I am compelled to laugh out loud and add this to my collection of TEM-Devils, and sometimes other objects like hearts and ghosts and snowflakes. Anyway, here is a little green cutie, which spawns from a mouse hepatocyte null for 14CoS and not receiving NTBC as a “saving” medicine and prone therefore to undergo massive hepatocytic apoptosis within a day or so of birth, and ultimate demise. This mouse is 24 hours post partum and showing signs of hepatocyte apoptosis, and mitochondrial and ER disarray, neg 16042, block 65718, anm#5, one chatter line removed with photoshop, layers constructed in photoshop, pseudocolor and eyes added in CorelDRAW.  Dont you wish there was a place to publish such stuff…. Maybe i will start my own journal…  help me think of a name.  (LOL)

 

5252 Windermere Ave, Los Angeles California 90041

Rants

This is where i grew up, so sad, the cute three-arched window in the master bedroom (which was small) has been stuccoed up, and the yard looks like no one cares.  My mom and dad took great care of this place which they purchased for 17k from my dad’s mom probably sometime in the late 1940s.  My brother and I did the yard on saturdays before going down to the Cinema on Eagle Rock Blvd. for a 10c movie.  I earned the money for the movie by raking and digging up dandelions from the grass. There was a loquat tree in the back yard which we climbed and ate from. A crawl space where my brother and I had a Lionel train set up with tracks and miniature houses, and props that we built, and a work bench with a really nice bench jig saw (the kind with an arm) and tools and a place to build model airplanes.

I walked back and forth to school often, and also from college  (Occidental College was only about a mile+ away, my dad dropped me off there on his way to work early in the morning). I lived there At least 23 years there, then the family moved to Hill Drive, just around the corner.

It was a tight squeeze for 5 children and two adults in this small house, (3 girls in a bedroom that need specially made small beds to fit against the wall, two brothers in bunk beds in the adjacent room) and there were sometimes cats, and a dog or two, and a neighbor’s child who was young when her mother died, and my mom kept her after school.

But it was big enough for Cub Scout meetings, and  Blue Bird meetings, and make believe dramas in the back yard as Campfire girls. A hand made play house, with a roof and windows –big enough to walk in, and some boards in the neighbor’s tree for a platform, a swingset, from which a neighbor boy jumped, breaking his arm, a place for other mischief and ouch, when my littlest sister wound her pinkie up in a bicycle gear.

Below the house on 5252 Windermere is the house which my music and art teacher lived, Mrs. Constance Braasch.  She had a tremendous influence on my life.  I still (after 70 years, play piano, she was my teacher for at least 12 years) and have a couple pictures and china pieces that we painted together.  She was a remarkable woman.

Outer nuclear pore filaments and mitochondrial proximity

Electron micrographs of liver, Glutamate cysteine ligase catalytic subunit KO mice, The cell: images, Ultimate order, the cell

These little junctions, that is, nuclear pore – mitochondrial associations, have been fascinating to me.  I have noticed and photographed (whether ideally fixed, or in focus, or in this species or that cell type, just as many as i can) to try someday to figure out what tasks they are carrying out. The obvious of course, providing energy, maybe for nucleo-cytoplasmic transport, but maybe too for nuclear rotation, as we all know happens from observing those old time lapse videos of tissue culture cells with mitochondria dancing close to the nucleus and the nucleus spinning  — ha ha – new question, to nuclei on the northern hemisphere rotate the same way as nuclei cultured in the southern hemisphere?) and also for nuclear shaping, but importantly, do they have something to do with chromosome territories? That is, something more than just an indirect influence like shape or transporting molecules.  Might they participate in the transport of ions through the outer pore areas as well as the core.  Might they influence assembly and repositioning of nuclear pores, making and or breaking them.

This particular nuclear pore-mitochondrial association is not the best micrograph in the world by a long shot, but it is from a heterozygous animal conditional ko of  Gclc in the liver (wc/ii) so has some increase in oxidative stress.

The original micrograph is on the left taken at 9500x, neg 17535 block 73458 anm# 505 wt hepatocyte.  filaments (wiggly lines) going up toward the mitochondria (top shaded grey) are prominent , the nuclear basket is not prominent, and something looks to be a pattern underneath the pore (black oval) that would likely be some tangential portion of the nuclear membrane (not hazarding a guess as to whether outer or inner.